Ch'an buddhism is a blossoming from Sino-Indian cultural intercourse，which has turned into a Sinicized Buddhist school with emphasis on the spontaneous realization of truth in everyday life. An enlightened man sees the essential unity of all things in the universe and lives a life of perfect freedom. From this spontaneous realization of truth and spirit of perfect freedom are evolved an unlimited variety of teaching methods to show one's self-nature. The Ch'an spirit is also demonstrated in poetry，paintings, gardening，tea-making，and other fields, and innumerable books have been written on these. This paper is a look back on the study of Ch'an paintings, divided into four parts: 1. the origins of Ch'an paintings, 2. the development of Ch'an paintings, 3. the recent condition of the study of Ch'an paintings, and 4. conclusion.
Ch'an painting used to be a kind of art in which a Ch'an practicer expressed the realized truth with brush and ink. It emphasized creativeness, incessant renovation，and unworldliness. Although the literary man's paintings, water-ink paintings, and abstract paintings of later periods raised their spiritual levels of expression through the influence of Ch'an, they were not genuine Ch'an paintings. The author hopes that modern painters may rediscover the hidden light of wisdom and recreate the splendor of Ch'an paintings.
