East Asian Buddhism

Common card · No. 427646

East Asian Buddhism or East Asian Mahayana is a collective term for the schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism which developed across East Asia and which rely on the Chinese Buddhist canon and other texts written in Literary Buddhist Chinese. These include the various forms of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese Buddhism. East Asian Buddhists constitute the numerically largest body of Buddhist traditions in the world, numbering over half of the world's Buddhists. East Asian forms of Buddhism all derive from the sinicized Buddhist schools which developed during the Han dynasty and the Song dynasty, and therefore are influenced by Chinese culture and philosophy. The spread of Buddhism to East Asia was aided by the trade networks of the Silk Road and the missionary work of generations of Indian and Asian Buddhists. Some of the most influential East Asian traditions include Chan (Zen), Nichiren Buddhism, Pure Land, Huayan, Tiantai, and Chinese Esoteric Buddhism. These schools developed new, uniquely...

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