Lineage
Chán took shape in Tang-dynasty China through teachers like Huineng, the sixth patriarch (638–713). Two streams emerged: a gradual school emphasising sustained sitting practice, and a sudden school holding that realisation could occur in a single moment if the conditions were right. The Japanese inheritance preserved both: Sōtō Zen, transmitted by Dōgen in the thirteenth century, centres on shikantaza — just sitting — while Rinzai Zen, transmitted by Eisai and refined by Hakuin, uses kōan study as a deliberate provocation toward sudden insight.
Distinct method
Zen has unusually little doctrine to teach by Mahāyāna standards. Its motto, attributed to Bodhidharma — a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded on words and letters, pointing directly to the human mind — is taken seriously in practice. The teacher-student relationship carries weight that scriptural study does not, and the methods are designed to short-circuit conceptual elaboration rather than to extend it. The Chinese context is also visible in its absorption of Taoist sensibilities — the comfort with paradox, the emphasis on naturalness, the suspicion of striving.
In the index
Adyashanti is the most direct living link in the index — fourteen years of formal Zen training before stepping outside the lineage to teach in his own voice. The Plum Village teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, although Vietnamese rather than Japanese, draw from the same Chán root.
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