20. The Classical Period of Chinese Buddhism

During the Tang Dynasty (618907), when Buddhism had been fully absorbed into Chinese civilization, a series of indigenous Chinese schools gave brilliant and distinctive expression to the values of the Mahayana tradition. The Tientai School (named after a sacred mountain) produced an influential synthesis of Buddhist teachings based on the Lotus sutra. The Huayen (Flower Garland) School pictured reality as a vast network of interrelated and interpenetrating phenomena. The Chan School developed the distinctive Chinese meditative tradition that came to be known in Japan as Zen. The Ching tu lineage developed the Chinese tradition of devotion to Amitabha Buddha. Buddhist values also had important influence on Chinese literature and the arts.