禅

禪
chán
#2,191 most
frequent character
dhyana (Sanskrit), Zen

Character breakdown

Source: Make Me a Hanzi.

禅 chán pairs 礻, an ancestral tablet, with 単 dān as sound part. Worship gives original 'offer sacrifices to heaven'; later it grew to Buddhist meditation and Zen. Read shàn, it grew to 'abdicate.'

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Same Characters, Different Readings

禅shàn
to abdicate

Homophones

HSK 6
馋chán
slander, defame, misrepresent
缠chán
to entangle
单chán
used in 單于|单于[chan2yu2]

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