In most spiritual traditions of India, the yogis practice dhyana to attain samadhi at its various levels. After years of austere practice as a yogi, the self-exiled Indian prince Siddhartha recognized that his realization was incomplete. He sat under the bodhi tree vowing not to rise until he had resolved the question of death and rebirth. Only when he became enlightened one evening, after seeing a bright star, did he rise. He had become the Buddha, the primal transmitter of Buddhism in our epoch. The Buddha's experience became the paradigm of tso-ch'an practice.

With the rise of Buddhism, two forms of practice developed. One is called samadhi liberation and the other is called wisdom liberation. The practice of wisdom liberation does not cultivate the nine levels of samadhi, but goes directly into the enlightened state. Ch'an follows the path of wisdom liberation.

Tso-ch'an of the Patriarchs

When pre-Ch'an masters practiced, they mostly used the methods given in the translated Hinayana sutras. For them, tso-ch'an referred to methods of sitting to attain samadhi. But among the later masters of Ch'an, the term was reserved for methods of attaining enlightenment without samadhi as an intermediate or final stage.