It is, however, possible to view Chan differently. The body of Chan literature is ironically perhaps the most voluminous of any in Chinese Buddhism. And while one would be hard-pressed to find therein arguments of the kind that are now widely regarded as essential tools of the (especially analytic) philosophical trade, it is a body of literature that I think can be very productively be engaged as enacting insights and inferences of considerable philosophical significance—a body of philosophical evidence rather than exposition and explanation.