Spiritual developmentReligion

What is Ch'an Buddhism?

The history of the whole of China is closely connected with Ch'an Buddhism, which in Japan is called Zen Buddhism. The influence of this religious and philosophical current was and is so strong that it became even a symbol of China, along with Shaolin Wushu. Chinese Buddhism is quite different from orthodox Buddhism, because it has the features of the Tao philosophy.

The founder of this branch of Buddhism is Bodhidharma. It was he who came to the Shaolin monastery once and developed a system of self-defense. Despite the widespread misconception, the combat system was originally only one of the many disciplines that the disciples possessed.

When Bodhidharma came to the Heavenly Kingdom, he saw that there was no need to preach the word of the Buddha. The Patriarch believed that it is possible to understand the essence of the teachings of the Sitharkha only by training the body and spirit. And if classical Buddhism developed in Eastern countries as a religion of mercy, then Ch'an Buddhism responded to the impulses of the soul of a medieval warrior. This was due to the fact that this branch of the doctrine absorbed the elements of the Tao philosophy. In Ch'an Buddhism, intuition was more important than the intellect, and hardness of mind and willpower are more important than rational thinking, the adept required perseverance and dedication. Therefore, the patriarch of Bodhidharma began preaching Chan with Wushu, and not with meditation. In addition, the objective reality required Shaolin's pupils to stand up for themselves. Robbers often attacked wandering monks, as they could not fight back. But over time the situation has changed dramatically. Bandits would rather attack a company of soldiers than a single skinhead monk.
If we begin to analyze this Shaolin Buddhism, its foundations, even for the uninitiated, are similar to the teachings of the Taoists, who considered the beginning of all the Void. But the similarity is not only in this. Ch'an Buddhism teaches that our visible world is constantly in motion, and this moving world is an illusion. The real world is at rest. It consists of dharmas, invisible elements that come in innumerable combinations with each other. This all forms the personality of the individual, realizing the law of karma. According to this law, everything that happens to a person is the result of his actions in past incarnations, and all the deeds in this life will inevitably affect the next reincarnation.

A person should realize the illusory world as a "body of the Buddha", one should strive to comprehend the "essence of the Buddha" not somewhere outside this world, but in everything that surrounds it, first of all in itself. Thus, self-knowledge became the basis of the practice of Shaolin monks.

The Daoist and Buddhist teachings have one more common feature: the core of these two currents is the idea of the "emptiness of the enlightened heart." Even Lao Tzu wrote that the ideal state of man, the ideal of knowledge - a return to the Void.

Ch'an Buddhism is the training of the body and spirit. Without a divine patron, a person in a harsh world must rely only on himself. And if in classical Buddhism with enlightenment the preacher breaks the circle of reincarnations, then in Ch'an Buddhism everything is different. Having received an intuitive insight and realizing his place in the world, a person begins to look at reality in a different way and gains inner peace. This is the ultimate goal of Ch'an Buddhism.

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