Talk:Northern and Southern Buddhism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Buddhism, an attempt to promote better coordination, content distribution, and cross-referencing between pages dealing with Buddhism. Please participate by editing the article Northern and Southern Buddhism, or visit the project page for more details on the projects. Guidelines: Chinese Manual of Style - Naming conventions Indic Manual of Style - Naming conventions Japanese Manual of Style Korean Manual of Style - Naming conventions Tibetan Proposed naming conventions
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
Article Grading: The article has not been rated for quality and/or importance yet. Please rate the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought "northern" and "southern" Buddhism referred to the separation of the "Sudden" and "Gradual" schools during the 8th century in China. Northern Buddhism was led by Shen Xiu and his followers, and was marked by their belief in gradual enlightenment through study and meditation. Southern Buddhism was led by Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch, and propogated sudden or instantaneous englightenment.

In the context of Zen, northern and southern schools refer to the split that you are talking about. Generally applied to Buddhism, Northern and Southern refer (generally) to a distinction between Mahayana and Theravada that's described in this article. There should maybe be a note in the article about Northern and Southern Zen as well. --Clay Collier 22:14, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I've added a mention of the alternative classification into Southern, Eastern & Northern. Probably the article should be rewritten & renamed. Peter jackson 10:25, 18 September 2007 (UTC)