Dahui Zonggao (????) (1089–1163) (Wade-Giles: Ta-hui Tsung-kao; Japanese: Daie Soko) was a 12th century Chinese Chan (Zen) master best known as a keen advocate of the use of koans to achieve enlightenment. He successfully created an ‘orthodoxy’ of teaching through koans which influenced all subsequent teachers in the Linji (Japanese: Rinzai) tradition of koan practice in China, Korea and Japan. Although he saw koan practice as the most effective method to enlightenment, he saw this practice in his time as becoming a superficial literary study and, in a radical move, he ordered the suppression of his own teacher’s masterly collection of koans, The Blue Cliff Record (Wade-Giles: Pi Yen Lu; Pinyin: Bìyán Lù; Japanese: Hekiganroku), burning all copies and the wooden blocks to print them, effectively taking the venerated text out of circulation for the next two centuries.
Born |
1089
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Died |
1163 (aged 73)
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Zodiac | |
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