Zen expected to become familiar with the classics of the Zen canon". A review of the early historical documents and literature of early Zen masters clearly reveals that they were well versed in numerous Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras, including Madhyamaka. Especially the Lotus Sutra played a large role in the development of East Asian Buddhism, including Zen. Nevertheless, Zen is often pictured as anti-intellectual. This picture of Zen emerged during the Song Dynasty (960–1297), when Chán became the dominant form of Buddhism in China, and gained great popularity among the educated and literary classes of Chinese society. The use of koans, which
A-not-A question A-not-A question In linguistics, an A-not-A question is a polar question that offers two opposite possibilities for the answer. This disjunctive question is predominantly found in Sinitic languages that offers a choice between an affirmative predicate and its negative counterpart. They are functionally regarded as a type of "yes/no" question as they are very similar to a large extent. "A-not-A" questions are often interpreted as having a 'neutral' presupposition or is used in a neutral context. This means that the person asking the A-not-A question does not assume the truth value of the proposition expressed by the question. The “A-not-A”