Zen Buddhism

8 Pages 2019 Words

na, or Theravada Buddhism. This loosely translated means, “The Lesser Vehicle.” Theravada Buddhism was mainly concerned with reaching individual enlightenment; how one could rise above the cycle of samsara and reach nirvana. Mahayana Buddhism, or, “The Great Vehicle,” became the popular form practiced in most of China, Japan and Korea. The followers of Mahayana believed that the entire world could reach salvation, and that those who follow Theravada were selfish for only fulfilling personal enlightenment. The bodhisattva, someone who has become enlightened but prolongs his/her entry to nirvana in order to save others, became the ideal, for it was the bodhisattva that was in search of universal salvation.
A few years before Buddhism gained a following in Japan, Bodhidharma took early Ch’an thoughts to China from India in 520 AD. When Bodhidharma arrived in China, it was not known as Ch’an yet, simply a school of meditation. This idea was further built on by another Chinese ideology at the time: Taoism. Taoists exalted intuition over reason, a tradition easily absorbed into the Chinese meditation school of the Ch’an.
“There is a legend the Buddha was once handed a flower and asked to preach on the law. The story says he received the blossom without a sound and silently wheeled it in his hand. Then amid the hush his most perceptive follower, Kashyapa, suddenly burst into a smile… and thus was born the wordless wisdom of Zen.”
Within two centuries, the meditation school had divided into two factions: Northern Ch’an and Southern Ch’an. The...