Making sense of the sūtras
By the 6th century China had received a huge and bewildering range of Buddhist texts, all said to be the Buddha's word, many of them seeming to contradict each other. Chinese masters responded by building systems that placed every teaching in order.
Four great traditions
Tiantai, founded by Zhiyi (538 to 597) on Mount Tiantai, arranged the sūtras into stages of the Buddha's teaching, with the Lotus Sūtra as the final and complete one, and taught a detailed system of calm and insight meditation.
Huayan, systematised by Fazang (643 to 712), drew on the Flower Garland Sūtra. It taught that every thing in the universe contains and reflects every other, pictured as the jewelled net of the god Indra, where each jewel reflects all the rest.
Pure Land teachers such as Tanluan and Shandao taught that in an age of decline, ordinary people could rely on the vow of the Buddha Amitābha, and be reborn in his Pure Land by calling on his name with faith.
Chan, better known by its Japanese name Zen, emphasised meditation and direct insight into one's own nature over study. It traced its lineage to the Indian monk Bodhidharma and honoured Huineng as its Sixth Patriarch.
What lasted
In 845 the Tang emperor Wuzong closed thousands of monasteries and forced hundreds of thousands of monks and nuns back into lay life. The great scholarly schools never fully recovered. Chan and Pure Land, which depended less on libraries and imperial patronage, became the dominant forms of Chinese Buddhism, and often blended together.
Why it matters
Buddhism was no longer simply being transmitted into China. Distinctively Chinese forms of Buddhist thought and practice were developing.
History and tradition
What historians can say
These schools are documented by their founders' own writings and by later histories. Their lineages, especially the early Chan lineage back to Bodhidharma, were partly constructed by later generations to give authority to their teachings.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
Chan tradition tells that Bodhidharma sat facing a cave wall for nine years, and that Huineng, an illiterate woodcutter, awakened on hearing a line of the Diamond Sūtra and was secretly given the patriarch's robe.