The Ch'an or Zen school is just as much a sinification of Buddhism as Hua-yen and the earlier T'ien-t'ai not to mention other Chinese Buddhist schools. One of the remarkable feats of sinification, in my book, is that the essence of Buddhism wasn't lost by the efforts of the Chinese sinicizers. One could even argue that the core essence of Buddhism was significantly enhanced and popularized, bringing it well within the reach of the Chinese population including the Chinese literati who helped popularize Zen. Helping the sinification was the adoption of Tathagata-garbha doctrine, that all sentient beings have the germ or seed of the Tathagata whereby they can become Buddhas if it is cultivated, correctly. In other words, all creatures are potentially, Buddhas. Robert Buswell, Jr. is insightful to observe this.
"To accommodate the lay practice of Buddhism, many of these new schools adopted a relatively minor strain of Mahayana thought that never developed into a formal school in India—that of tathagatagarbha (ju-lai-tsang 'embryo of Buddhahood')—as the basis of their doctrinal frameworks. Tathagatagarbha doctrine conceived of all sentient beings as being already Buddhas and thus inherently enlightened" (Sudden and Gradual, p. 324).
At the heart of Chinese Buddhism is Tathagata-garbha which I hasten to add, has very positive soteriological implications unlike the negative not-self doctrine (anâtma-vâda). This may account for why not-self doctrine is noticeably absent in Zen which, being only prevalent outside of the circle of Buddhist China's influence. Zen was not without its Tathagata-garbha influence, its early school being named after the Lankavatara Sutra (a good book on Zen's early history is Cleary's book, Zen Dawn, which deals exclusively with the Lanka School of Zen). Incidentally, D.T. Suzuki takes up the influence of Tathagata-garbha doctrine in his book, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra.
It almost goes without saying this but Zen is clearly a product of sinification yet, remarkably, nowhere in this sinification do we find the fundamental essence of Buddhism removed. Even in the later Sung period, Zen encounter dialogues (chi-yüan wen-ta), which are the bread & butter of koan practice; which are the tools of K'an-hua Ch'an, the bright pearl of Tathagata-garbha is still there, although not in the way the conceptualizing Zen practitioner wishes it to be. The sole intent of these koan dialogues is to paralyze the conceptualizing intellect in such a way that mind is able to realize itself winning, finally, Buddhahood.
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