Yunmen in Context Setting the Stage for Chan Long before Buddhism arrived in China around the beginning of the Common Era, Chinese thinkers taught ideas whose orientation was of striking similarity to some central tenets of that foreign religion that had yet to arrive. These teachings, ascribed to the ancient sages Laozi (Lao-tzu) and Zhuangzi [...]

An Introduction to a Remarkable Life Youth Yunmen was born in 864 in Jiaxing, a town between Shanghai and Hangzhou on China’s eastern coast. His family name was Zhang; but because it was the custom for Buddhist monks to abandon their family names, he became known as Wenyan and later took the name of Mt. [...]