From the mysterious death of Bodhidharma to the renewed anti-Buddhist persecutions - we discuss the earliest form of Zen that had to weather these troubled times. Proto-Zen, aka Huike's school.
Sources: Reps and Senzaki's Mumonkan, McRae, Northern School; Britannica, terebess (https://terebess.hu/zen/huike.html), Two Entries, Four Practices Treatise and appended letters as translated by McRae, Jinhua Chen (Creation of the Third Chan Patriarch), Wonderwheel's blog (http://wonderwheels.blogspot.com/2017/04/one-vehicle-zen.html), Cleary's Transmission of Light, and special thanks to grass_skirt for translation help