Talk:Chan Buddhism

General Aritlce
I believe this article should be the article for general information about the Chan school. The zen page should be used for only for information about specifically the japanese tradition, and the Japanese Zen page should be merged with the zen page. The is also the Dhyāna in Buddhism page for discussion of the principle outside of specific national variations Mualphachi (talk) 18:02, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Requested move
I'm going to move this to Chan Buddhism. It and Chan (Buddhism) got equal support, but "Buddhism" got stronger arguments than (Buddhism). Nyttend (talk) 17:30, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Chinese Chán → Chinese Chan – No pinyin tone diacritics in titles. Timmyshin (talk) 02:25, 9 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Support. The diacritic doesn't belong, see Britannica or this book. But that's hardly the most serious problem with this title. Shouldn't it be Chan (Buddhism)? La crème de la crème (talk) 05:31, 9 September 2014 (UTC) Sockpuppet investigations/Kauffner
 * Move to Chan Buddhism - per WP:CRITERIA and User:La crème de la crème's suggestion (but no need for parenthesis WP:NATURAL) as recognizable titles. No surprisingly searching for "Chinese Chan" on Amazon produces The Chinese Parrot: A Charlie Chan Mystery. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:35, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment: The adjective "Chinese"was used to distinguish it from "Japanese Zen". But "Chan (Buddhism)" is fine too.  Joshua Jonathan   -  Let's talk!   07:29, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This makes no sense since there is no Japanese Chan. Although I understand where it is coming from. Timmyshin (talk) 08:53, 9 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Support removing the diacretic per WP:MOS-ZH and common usage in English texts. --Cold Season (talk) 19:40, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Move to Chan (Buddhism): "Chinese Chan" is too ambiguous, as Chan (Chen) is a very common surname for the Chinese people. -Zanhe (talk) 19:51, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment - Readers would be very likely to think "Chinese Chan" referring to the Chinese surname "Chan". Support the move to "Chan (Buddhism)". STSC (talk) 11:38, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Asking comment could you please give your opinion too?   Joshua Jonathan   -  Let's talk!   14:19, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I support the move to Chan Buddhism, per WP standards for using the common name. "Chinese Chán" is not the usual name, and is redundant. Tengu800 05:16, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

...Pure Land Buddhism?
" After the Song, Chan more or less fused with Pure Land Buddhism." (first paragraph).

This is a factoid that I've never seen reported anywhere else and is not sourced here. It seems implausible: the two systems--Pure Land being perhaps a Christian influenced version of Buddhism and Chan lying, by some measures, almost at the other end of the philosophical spectrum. Can we get more...or less...on this? --174.7.10.39 (talk) 17:05, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmm. A little more research on the web has shown that some people--predominantly Pure Land Buddhists--see some similarities between the two systems of ideas and practices, and apparently there were some teachers in China who combined the two practices. But I still haven't found any other suggestion that Pure Land subsumed Chan. --174.7.56.10 (talk) 19:27, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Pure Land is not Christian-influenced at all, it is an independent development that bears no resemblance to Christianity. By the Yuan and Ming, Chan in China and Pure Land Buddhism were being taught as a unified school. There are cites on the page. Incidentally I am trying to clean the page up because it's very messy. One sample cite from the article is Sharf, Robert H. (2002), On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch'an/Pure Land Syncretism in Mediaeval China, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. BRILL is a top-notch respected academic publisher. Ogress smash! 20:04, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * @Ogress Late reply, but the Sharf article and other newer citations such as "Narratives of Buddhist decline and the concept of the sect (zong) in modern Chinese Buddhist thought" show that the traditional narrative of Chan being syncretized with Pure Land, Tiantai, Huayan and other schools of thought during the Ming dynasty and later is actually incorrect. Newer research show that Chinese Buddhists never conceptualized Chan and other Buddhist "schools" as distinctive, independent sectarian institutions (which is the way that Japanese Buddhism came to develop) and that mixed practice from the various schools was very common among Chinese masters and laypeople as far back as the Tang dynasty. This means that Pure Land and Chan (and the other traditions like Tiantai) in China did not really "fuse" at any point in time but rather had always been taught and practiced together to different extents throughout history. Strong distinctions between the various traditions only really took place in medieval Japan where strong sectarian identities were formed based on the different traditions. Nyarlathotep1001 (talk) 04:28, 17 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Also, the article does not say that Pure Land subsumed Chan, but that they "more or less fused." That's kind of basic knowledge about Chinese Buddhism.  Joshua Jonathan   -  Let's talk!   04:26, 19 May 2015 (UTC)


 * @Ogress: "...bears no resemblance to Christianity." Really? Admittedly there are obvious differences (the chanting of the name of Amitabha's name, and the impermanent nature of the Pure Land for example) but the devotional, religious nature of both as well as the central role of the afterlife/heaven makes it difficult to understand "no resemblance". There seems to be far greater resemblance between Pure Land and Christianity and none that I can discern between Ch'an and Pure Land. Martin Palmer, a British Historian and writer, is one of those who suggests that there is such a link but I have also seen opinions that Pure Land gave rise to the Christian ideas, so all of these ideas appear to have slender and thus unreliable support.


 * And on that score, thanks at least for addressing the point that I raised by pointing out the one cite. But the one cite is all there is for several scattered references to the same assertion: of a link between Ch'an and Pure Land. I searched the web--including a stop at EB--and still could find no other references to a link between Pure Land and Ch'an.


 * And my reason for raising the query was the bewildering lack of any obvious ties between the two sets of beliefs. Ch'an, if anything, seemed to distance itself from the Mahayana belief in the Buddha as divine (Lin Chi's "...kill the Buddha") and to return to a "down to earth" practice and focus. What do the two systems have in common?


 * It's just my feeling that the assertion of such an bizarre marriage of ideas could benefit from clarification and support.


 * @JJ: JJ really! Was that the core of the issue raised or are you nit-picking in the talk pages? The fact that Ch'an disappeared after the merger would suggest that 'subsumed' was a conversational approximation. And as for the last sentence, as an intelligent reader, in a forum such as this, I expect that if this is indeed the "basic knowledge" that you claim it should be easy to produce further citations.
 * --50.68.134.51 (talk) 01:18, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Ah. I confess that my lack of particular interest in Pure Land Buddhism until now has perhaps left me with incomplete information about how it would tie-in with Ch'an, but fortunately the WP article on Pure Land Buddhism provides both a much improved answer to my question here and to PLB generally, wisdom that could profitably be referenced at least here.

I quote from the WP article: "Upon encountering Japanese Pure Land traditions which emphasize faith, many westerners saw outward parallels between these traditions and Protestant Christianity. This has led many western authors to speculate about possible connections between these traditions.[39] However, the cosmology, internal assumptions, and underlying doctrines and practices are now known to have many differences.[39]". --50.68.134.51 (talk) 19:45, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Are we writing Chan or Chán here?
I'm happy to normalise the whole page, but since it seems about 50/50 now, what's normal? Laodah 05:19, 28 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I guess Chan... Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  06:03, 28 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Any other votes? I lean toward Chán myself. Laodah 03:53, 5 February 2022 (UTC)


 * OK, since no-one weighed in, I've normalised the article. In the end, though I favour Chán, I chose Chan as the norm because it appears that way in the article title. Laodah 05:14, 15 February 2022 (UTC)