Even Chan (Zen) Buddhism, which has a long and deep tradition but which emphasizes personal experience and eschews reliance on written texts, diverged into variants such as "literary" Chan, "mad" Chan and "wild fox" Chan from the Yuan and Ming dynasties onward. Such divergence can happen all the more easily with spiritual cultivation, which has much shallower foundations.
即使具有深厚傳統，強調印證、不立文字的禪宗，在元明之後，都異化出文字禪、狂禪、野狐禪來，更何況相對基礎甚為薄弱的靈修。