Tradition names the Indian monk Bodhidharma as the first patriarch of Chan in China, bearer of the teaching of meditation facing the wall at Shaolin; what the histories record with confidence is a meditation master of the sixth century around whom the Zen lineage gathers its charter.
The Event
- Date
- c. 520 (traditional)
- Era
- Classical; Standard periodization of Buddhist history
- Location
- Shaolin; today Henan, China
- Traditions
- Buddhism
- Streams
- Zen
- Key figures
- Bodhidharma
Primary Sources
- The earliest Chan records
Secondary Sources
- Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History (Macmillan, 1994)
- Buswell and Lopez, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, 2014)
Provenance: HIST-0412; confidence 0.8; accessed 2026-10-27.
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