Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
I feel ya. My flippant response would be that Daoism is even less defined. Such is the nature of a shamanic tradition. But I'd also argue that it was the influence of Daoism upon Buddhism that spawned Zen (or Chan if we're being strictly Chinese). Buddhism doesn't quite definitively formalize until it leaves India and China. You might say the Tibetan is defined, but that's so dependent upon the influence of their local pantheon of gods which mated with Buddhism; it's a completely unique take on the tradition. Once Buddhism and Zen gets to Japan, it gets super formal. Such is Japan, right?
Would you say that a lot of the complexities regarding Buddhism in China is rooted in the fact that, even before Mao and the Cultural Revolution, Chinese people were trying to wipe out their own traditional culture to make room for "progress" or "modernization", but now the country is scrambling to try and bring back and revitalize a religion they in some ways had forgotten.