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Chan is never used for strangers or people one has just met. Although traditionally, honorifics are not applied to oneself, some people adopt the childlike affectation of referring to themselves in the third person using -chan (childlike because it suggests that one has not learned to distinguish between names used for oneself and names used by ...
Chan is the originating tradition of Zen Buddhism (the Japanese pronunciation of the same character, which is the most commonly used English name for the school). Chan Buddhism spread from China south to Vietnam as Thiền and north to Korea as Seon , and, in the 13th century, east to Japan as Japanese Zen .
See also Zen for an overview of Zen, Chan Buddhism for the Chinese origins, and Sōtō, Rinzai and Ōbaku for the three main schools of Zen in Japan. Japanese Zen refers to the Japanese forms of Zen Buddhism, an originally Chinese Mahāyāna school of Buddhism that strongly emphasizes dhyāna, the meditative training of awareness and equanimity. [1]
"Silent illumination" or "silent reflection" was the hallmark of the Chinese Caodong school of Chan. [web 2] The first Chan teacher to articulate silent illumination was the Caodong master Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091—1157), who wrote an inscription entitled "silent illumination meditation" (Mokushō zen 默照禅 or Mòzhào chán 默照禪). [9]
Chan texts present the school as Buddhism itself, or as the central teaching of Buddhism, which has been transmitted from the seven Buddhas of the past to the twenty-eight patriarchs, and all the generations of Chinese and Japanese Chan and Zen masters that follow.
The word in Chinese means literally "to yell" [4] or "to shout." [5] In Japanese it has also developed the meaning of "to browbeat", [6] "to scold", and "hoarse."[7]In the context of Chan and Zen practice, the word is not generally used in its literal meaning(s), but rather—much as with the martial arts shout of kiai—as fundamentally a means of focusing energy.
In the Rinzai-school, a difference is made between acknowledgement of insight and succession in the organisation: From the Rinzai perspective, true realization (jisshō) and succession to a master (shijō) are two different stages in the course of practice，the latter implying a comprehensive integration of awakening in the activities of ...
The principle teachers of the Chan, Zen and Seon traditions are commonly known in English translations as "Patriarchs". However, the more precise terminology would be "Ancestors" or "Founders" ( Chinese : 祖 ; pinyin : zǔ ) and "Ancestral Masters" or "Founding Masters" ( Chinese : 祖師 ), as the commonly used Chinese terms are gender neutral.