Does early Zen really belong to Zen?
The subject is unequivocally this: Was there Zen or dhyana in China before Bodhidharma came to China? To answer this subject with the yes means, or should mean, that Zen or dhyana was not the school or convention (tsung) as you know Zen today. Rather Zen was Buddhist imagining that made possible gnosis or jna in that the adept awakened to their true inlet or the same, awakened to the luminous inlet of Mind.
In the Biographies of venerable Buddhist Teachers (Nanjio, No. 1490; Taish, No. 2059) finished in 519 A.D. there were listed twenty-one Zen or dhyana masters in that the name of Bodhidharma is not included (Encyclopaedia of Buddhism Volume III, p. 201). In the later autobiography compiled in 645 A.D., the name of 135 dhyana experts have been found together with the few of the evident disciples of Bodhiharma (ibid). During this period of time there were Zen masters but no school or convention in the approach you consider of Zen today. More importantly, if Bodhidharma came to Southern China around 475 as the owner of Zen or dhyana because isnt he referred to in these two biographies? This is an startling omission.
From this you can tentatively interpretation that the early phase of Zen was pristine Zen: it was Zen that hadnt been institutionalized; incited in to to 'funeral Zen" that is what it is in Japan. Also it was Zen but the origin (tsung). It was taught by Zen masters similar to Buddhabhadra (398421) as well as others. It is usually most later that Zen became the school/lineagethe Zen that you recognize currently that is arguably the opposite Zen than early Zen.
