The Indian patriarch who carried Chan to China. The wall-gazing ancestor of Zen.
Sixth-century South Indian monk who crossed by sea to southern China, sat for nine years in a cave at Shaolin facing a wall, and transmitted what would become Chan in China and Zen in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The dharma transmitted from mind to mind, outside the scriptures, begins with him.
The meditation school that strips Mahayana to its experiential core: a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded on words and letters; pointing directly at the human mind, seeing into one's own nature, attaining buddhahood.
