Yuan-wu K’o-ch’in (Jap., Engo Kokugon), 1063-1135, Chinese Ch’an (Zen) master of the Yōgi lineage of Rinzai Zen (Yōgi school); a student and dharma successor (hassu) of Wu-tsu Fa-yen (Jap., Goso Hōen) and the master of Hu-kuo Ching-yuan (Jap., Gokoku Keigen), – Hu-ch’in Shao-lung (Jap., Kukyū Jōryū), and – Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Jap., Daie Sōkō). Yuan-wu was one of the most important Ch’an masters of his time. With masters like him and the twenty-years-younger Wu-men Hui-k’ai (Jap., Mumon Ekai), also in the tradition of the Yōgi school, Ch’an reached the last peak of its development in China before the dharma transmitted by the patriarchs (soshigata) from heart-mind to heart-mind (ishin-denshin) was brought to Japan. There it continued to flourish, while in China it gradually declined.
Master Ta-hui, one of Yuan-wu’s chief students, played a major role in shaping kōan practice Hakuin Zenji, the great renewer of Rinzai Zen in Japan, was in the lineage of transmission stemming from Yuan-wu. Yuan-wu himself is known primarily as the editor of the Pi-yen-lu, together with the Wu-men-kuan one of the two best-known kōan collections. His instructions, incidental remarks (jakugo ), and explanations on the hundred kōans collected and provided with “praises” (ju) by Master Ch’ung-hsien make the Pi-yen-lu one of the greatest works of Ch’an (Zen) literature and one of the most helpful for training students.
Son of a family from Szechuan, the heads of which had been Confucian scholars for generations, as a child he learned the Confucian classics by heart. He was attracted to Buddhism at an early age and entered a Buddhist monastery, where he devoted himself to the study of the sūtras. After nearly dying from an illness, he came to the conclusion that mere scholarly erudition could not bring one to the living truth of the buddha-dharma. Thus he set out to find an enlightened Ch’an master. As an unsui, he traveled to south China, where he eventually found and stayed with Master Wu-tsu, whom he served as an attendant for many years. Even after he had realized profound enlightenment under Wu-tsu and had received from him the seal of confirmation (inka-shōmei), he stayed with him to train further until the master’s death.
Then he set out for the north, where he was appointed by high state officials and finally by Emperor Hui-tsung himself to the abbacy of various large Ch’an monasteries. The conquest of north China by the Kitan drove him once again to south China. However, he soon returned to his home province and was active there as a Ch’an master until his death.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Books on Yuan-wu K’o-ch’in
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