Yishan Yining


Yishan Yining was a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled to Japan. Before monkhood his family name was Hu.. He was born in 1247 in Linhai, Taizhou, Zhejiang, China. He was a monk of the Linji school during the Yuan Dynasty of China, and subsequently a Rinzai Zen master who rose to prominence in Kamakura Japan. He was one of the chief disseminators of Zen Buddhism among the new militarized nobility of Japan, a calligrapher and a writer. Mastering a variety of literary genres and being a prolific teacher, he is mostly remembered as the pioneer of Japanese Gozan Bungaku literature, that recreated in Japan the literary forms of Song dynasty.

Biography

China

Originally from Zhejiang, Yining became a monk in childhood in Hongfusi monastery and took full ordination in Puguangsi Monastery. He originally studied Tiantai school, then turning to Chan. After changing a number of tutors, he became the Dharma heir of Wanji Singmi, the fourth lineage holder of Mi'an Xianji. Later he became the abbot of Puji Monastery on the Island of Putuoshan and rose to wide fame as a Buddhist master.

Kamakura

In 1299, during the reign of Temür Khan, Emperor Chengzong of Yuan, the Yuan government sent him on a diplomatic mission to Japan to restore relations with the Bakufu government. On arrival at Kamakura he was arrested by the regent Hojo Sadatoki on charges of spying. However, soon Sadatoki came to respect his prisoner and set him free.
Yishan Yinging stayed in Japan to become one of the major Zen teachers of the Kamakura period. In Kamakura, he served in the monasteries of Kenchō-ji, Engaku-ji and Jochi-ji.

Kyoto

In 1313 the resigned emperor Go-Uda invited him to Kyoto to become the abbot of Nanzen-ji, the most influential Zen center of the time. He is still remembered in this monastery today.

Influence

He popularized Zen in the circles of new military aristocracy and, mastering variety of literary genres ranging from historiography to poetry, he started the literary orientation of Japanese monkhood to the standards of Song literature of China. This added to the standard zazen practice of Zen monasteries such ordeals as studies in Confucian canon and writings of the Song Confucian scholars.
Among his students there werу such key figures of the subsequent development of Zen as Muso Soseki, Sesson Yubai and Kokan Shiren.

Death

Yishan Yining committed suicide in 1317 after several attempts to resign from the duties of abbot on grounds of severe illness.
The Japanese Imperial Court granted him the posthumous title of the Teacher of State.