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寂円 Jiyuan (1207-1299)

(Rōmaji:) 宝慶寂円 Hōkyō Jakuen

Jìyuán (寂円, 1207 – 8 October 1299), better known to Buddhist scholars by his Japanese name Jakuen, was a Chinese Zen monk and a disciple of Rujing. Most of his life is known to us only through medieval hagiography, legends, and sectarian works. It is generally agreed, though, that during his time at Tiāntóng Mountain he befriended Dōgen who was also studying under Rujing. After Rujing's death in 1228, Jakuen immigrated to Japan in order to join his friend's emerging Sōtō school, but did not receive dharma transmission from Dōgen directly, rather his disciple Koun Ejō.
Jakuen outlived Dōgen and became embroiled in the sandai sōron, a dispute over orthodoxy and succession. In 1261 he left Eihei-ji, leaving the other monks to resolve the power struggle amongst themselves, but allegedly taking with him many treasures of Eihei-ji entrusted to him by Dōgen. He arrived on a remote mountain in Fukui prefecture, where he became famous to the locals for his ascetic meditation on a mountainside without the benefit of any monastic community. During this time, according to medieval legend, he gained the friendship of a cow and dog who would follow him into town during almsrounds. The rock that he sat on has also become a local landmark. Eventually he built a monastery called Hōkyō-ji (宝慶寺) in the style of Tiāntóng, which today owns the only surviving early treasures of Eihei-ji, and serves as a training center for Japanese and international Sōtō Zen Buddhists.
In medieval Japan Jakuen's monastic community split into two separate lineages, one at Hōkyō-ji and one at Eihei-ji which was responsible for some of the corruption that went on there.
Today, there are communities of monks in both China and Japan who claim descent from Jakuen. His disciple Giun became abbot of Eihei-ji. In Japan, there is a temple in Tokyo named Jakuen-ji. Hōkyō-ji is officially in communion with the official Sōtō lineage through Keizan, but unofficially consider Jakuen their patriarch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakuen

Jakuen and Giun:* Local Growth and Ties to Eiheiji
In: DOC: Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan > PDF
by William M. Bodiford
Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 8. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993, 368 p.
*Gi'un 義雲 (1253–1333)

Jakuen and Giun: Local Growth and Ties to Eiheiji

Jakuen (Ch. Chi-yüan, 1207-1299) was unique in many ways. As a native-born Chinese, his mother tongue, worldview, and initial training in the Buddhism of the continent set him apart. Jakuen had not been schooled in the unique doctrinal syntheses of Japanese Tendai nor exposed to its political corruption. From his unique Chinese background, scholars have drawn two contradictory interpretations of Jakuen : either he was the disciple who clung most strongly to Dōgen's own interpretation of Zen or he was the individual who introduced "deviant" Chinese practices. 1 Jakuen's lineage neither flourished like those of Giin and Gikai, nor did it fail like those of Senne and Gien (the obscure fourth abbot of Eiheiji). Jakuen's temple, Hōkyōji, survived. And more important, a collateral branch of Jakuen's line entered Eiheiji from Hōkyōji. Beginning in 1314, with Eiheiji's fifth abbot, Giun, Jakuen's dharma descendants dominated Eiheiji until the Tokugawa shogunate's forced reorganization of the Sōtō school (ca. 1612). 2 During this period, the policies adopted by Jakuen's descendants at Eiheiji greatly influenced the institutional hierarchy of the medieval Sōtō school, while the records compiled by the Jakuen-line historians Kenkō (1413-ca. 1468) and Kenzei have greatly influenced all subsequent understanding of early Sōtō history.
Of Jakuen very little is known. He is not mentioned in any of Dōgen's writings. His earliest biography, Hōkyō yuishoki (ca. 1457-1468) by Kenkō, is a sectarian work, written to emphasize Jakuen's closeness to Ju-ching and, through him, to Dōgen. 3 Kenkō's account of Jakuen's having established a firm relationship with both Ju-ching and Dōgen while still in China is patently false. According to Kenkō, Jakuen began his religious life at Ching-te ssu, where he received tonsure, full ordination, and Zen training under Ju-ching. Kenkō asserts that Jakuen agreed to become Dōgen's disciple at Ching-te ssu in 1223—even though at that
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time Dōgen was just beginning his study in China. In 1227, when Dōgen returned to Japan, Kenkō states that Jakuen accompanied Dōgen to the port hoping to be able to travel with him to Japan. Dōgen, however, advised Jakuen to remain in China so that he would attend to the ailing Ju-ching. Hence Jakuen did not arrive in Japan until a year later, after Ju-ching had passed away. Yet Jakuen is not mentioned in any contemporary sources.
These omissions suggest that Jakuen's relationship with Dōgen probably began after Jakuen's arrival in Japan, not in 1228, but after Dōgen began accepting his own disciples at Kōshōji in 1230. At Kōshōji and at Eiheiji, Jakuen managed the memorial hall, where commemorative services were performed in honor of Ju-ching. Jakuen thereby became Eiheiji's first tassu, a title by which he was referred to even posthumously. 4 Although tassu eventually came to refer to the master of a subtemple within a larger compound (in which sense I have translated it as "prior"), in Jakuen's case it merely refers to the leader of memorial services. After Dōgen's death, Jakuen became Ejō's disciple. 5
Jakuen left Eiheiji in 1261. His departure occurred at about the same time that other leading monks also left Eiheiji. Gikai set out in 1259; Jakuen in 1261; Senne and Kyōgō before 1263; and Giin in 1264. Only Ejō, Gien, and a few former followers of the Darumashū remained. Jakuen did not follow in the footsteps of the other departing monks. Instead of traveling to China or entering the capital, he went further into seclusion. As described by Kenkō, Jakuen retired to a solitary life of meditation at the foot of a peak named Ginnanpō about twenty-five kilometers from Eiheiji, where his only companions were wild animals. 6 The wild animals soon were joined by Ijira Tomotoshi (posthumous name, Shinkū), the leader of a local Fujiwara family in charge of the Ono District, who offered Jakuen financial support. According to Kenkō, Jakuen had first encountered Ijira when the latter chanced on him during a hunt. It was not until 1278, however, that Tomotoshi's son, Tomonari (posthumous name, Chien) began constructing a proper Zen temple for Jakuen. 7 His temple, Hōkyōji, borrowed its name from the Hōkyō (Ch. Pao-ch'ing) era, during which Dōgen studied under Ju-ching. This name suggests that Jakuen had desired to perpetuate the memory of Ju-ching even after leaving Eiheiji's memorial hall. 8
Shortly after 1279 Giun (Jakuen's future dharma heir) joined Hōkyōji. 9 Ejō might well have sent Giun to Jakuen, since Giun had worked with Ejō copying Dōgen's writings. 10 In 1282 Keizan also left Ejō's side to enter Hōkyōji, where he served as the group leader (ino) in daily meditation and other monastic rituals. Keizan claimed to have scaled the spiritual heights under Jakuen's direction, first attaining the stage of nonre‐ trogression and then experiencing enlightenment in 1285. Even though
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Keizan later became Gikai's disciple, late in life he still honored Jakuen as his teacher. 11 In spite of Keizan's accomplishments, Jakuen's most important disciple remained Giun, who inherited Jakuen's dharma in 1295. Giun succeeded to the abbotship of Hōkyōji four years later, shortly before Jakuen passed away. 12 It was this same Giun who won the confidence of the Hatano family and carried Jakuen's lineage back to Eiheiji. After already having served fifteen years as abbot of Hōkyōji, he went on to manage Eiheiji's affairs for another eighteen years, from 1314 to 1333. 13
The early patronage of Hōkyōji by the Ijira family reveals many characteristic features of rural warrior religious practices. The Ijira family had first gained prominence for their role in helping the Hōjō regents defeat the forces of Emperor Gotoba during the so-called Jōkyū Disturbance (1221). For this service, the shogunate rewarded them with land steward (jitō) rights to the Ijira region (from which they later derived their family name) in Mino (now part of Gifu Prefecture). Shortly thereafter, however, they moved north to Echizen, where they established a family residence along the banks of the Ajimi River in the Ōno District, over which they also extended their control. The Ajimi valley begins at the base of Ginnanpō (the site of Hōkyōji), from which it joins the Asuwa River valley leading toward Hajakuji, and beyond to Eiheiji. 14 As newcomers to the area, the Ijira no doubt sought to establish a family temple that would symbolize both their dominance over that district and the permanence of their family's roots in that location. Because the Ijira family residence was situated directly between Eiheiji and Ginnanpō, Jakuen's encounter with Ijira Tomotoshi could not have been merely fortuitous.
By selecting a monk from Eiheiji as abbot for their new temple, the Ijira also demonstrated their political goodwill toward the Hatano—a family powerful both locally in Echizen and within the shogunate. The Ijira further indicated their devotion to the shogunate by expressly stating in 1278, and again in 1299, that Hōkyōji was being built in honor of the regent Hōjō Tokiyori (1227-1263). 15 Donations to Hōkyōji were repeatedly made as overt signs of political intentions. In 1346 the Ijira donated images of two divinities, Jikokuten (Skt. Dhṛtarāṣṭra; the king guarding the east) and Tamonten (Skt. Vaiśravaṇa; the king guarding the north), to Hōkyōji in the name of Shōgun Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358) as a show of their support of his struggle against the Southern Court. In 1365 the Ijira reiterated their support by donating still more lands to Hōkyōji as an offering for the future enlightenment of the recently deceased Takauji. 16
Hōkyōji also served as a focal point for the Ijira family's own religious devotion. Their religious attitude, like that of other warriors, was at once
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both exclusive and eclectic. In 1365 the Ijira ordered that Hōkyōji should always maintain its Sōtō affiliation and be led only by an abbot who had received a proper face-to-face transmission within Jakuen's own dharma lineage. Yet this same order also stipulated that devotional rites be performed every five days (in addition to rites on the fifth, fourteenth, fifteenth, eighteenth, and last days of each month) for a wide variety of Buddhist divinities, including Śākyamuni, Amitabha, Miroku (Skt. Maitreya), Kannon, Jizō (Skt. Kṣitigarbha), Monjū (Skt. Mañjuśri), Kokūzō, and Bodhidharma. 17 From this eclectic worship, we know that the Ijira's exclusive support of Jakuen's Sōtō line derived from political and personal concerns. As already mentioned, the Ijira's support of a Sōtō temple helped link them to other Sōtō patrons, such as the Hatano family. Another reason for the Ijira to have patronized Hōkyōji might have been to provide alternate careers for younger or sickly relatives who were excluded from primogeniture. In their 1365 order, the Ijira expressly enjoined Hōkyōji from selecting abbots simply on the basis of [Ijira] family ties, thereby indicating their family's presence within the monastic community.
Some scholars have suggested that Giun, Jakuen's dharma heir and Hōkyōji's second abbot, must have been an Ijira. Nothing is known with certainty concerning Giun's early career beyond the fact that he worked with Ejō copying Dōgen's Shōbō genzō in 1279. 18 One can only speculate, therefore, as to why he had become Jakuen's disciple following Ejō's death in 1280. Proponents of the theory that Giun was born an Ijira note two conspicuous coincidences. 19 First, the Ijira began supporting Jakuen in the 1260s but failed to build him a temple until 1278, at a time when presages of Ejō's imminent decease must have become apparent. Second, the Ijira donated lands sufficient to support a large monastery only in 1299, the year that Giun became abbot of Hōkyōji. In addition to this apparent synchronization, Giun's goroku was published at Eiheiji in 1357 on the request and financial support of the Ijira. 20 If Giun was in fact an Ijira, then his assumption of Eiheiji's abbotship in 1314 must have been a major achievement for the Ijira family. These speculations, regardless of their ultimate validity, demonstrate that the true circumstances by which Giun became Eiheiji's fifth abbot cannot be fully understood until more is known of the political relations between the Hatano and the Ijira.
Giun is remembered for his goroku and for his verse commentary on Dōgen's Shōbō genzō. Composed in 1329, this commentary consists of a preface along with an introductory verse for each chapter. Giun probably composed these verses as part of a series of lectures on the Shōbō genzō. 21 One by one, the verses indicate or summarize the key issue in each chapter. Short verses, of course, cannot clarify very much. None
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theless, Giun's verses stand out as the only explanations of Dōgen's Shōbō genzō written during the more than 420-year interval that separates Kyōgō's Goshō from Tenkei's Tokugawa-period commentary. Unlike Senne and Kyōgō, who commented on a seventy-five chapter text, Giun wrote verses for a different, fifty-nine chapter version. 22 This fifty‐ nine chapter Shōbō genzō used by Giun contains nine chapters not found in the seventy-five chapter version but lacks twenty-five others. 23
Giun's other literary efforts also focused on Dōgen and Dōgen's Chinese affiliations. Giun copied the Hōkyōki,24 a problematical account of Ju-ching's teachings that Dōgen seems to have compiled in Japan without the assistance of Ejō. 25 His goroku consists largely of comments based on quotations from other goroku of earlier Sōtō teachers, such as Dōgen, Ju-ching, and Hung-chih Cheng-chüeh (1091-1157), a famous Ts'ao-tung patriarch. When Giun cited a Zen patriarch from outside the Sōtō lineage, he almost invariably used a collection of 301 kōan compiled by Dōgen (i.e., the Chinese-language Shōbō genzō). Giun's quotations indicate the emphasis that he placed on Chinese Ch'an traditions. He quotes from Hung-chih nearly three times more often than from Dōgen. Usually, Giun merely quoted Hung-chih word for word as the concluding portion of his lecture, thereby emphasizing his acceptance of Hungchih's position . 26
Giun adopted Hung-chih's use of Zen function words (kikan) in which enlightenment reveals itself by a series of reversible or dialectical relationships, such as the three ways (sanro), the four substitutions (shishaku), the four student-masters (shihinju), and the five ranks (goi). Within Giun's goroku these exotic terms appear only within passages drawn from Hung-chih's writings. 27 Yet Giun's mastery of these teaching devices must have extended beyond mere mimicry, since Japanese Rinzai monks—such as Getsudō Sōki (1285-1361) of the Daiō line and Chūgan Engetsu (1300-1375) of the Daie (Ch. Ta-hui) line—came to Giun in order to learn the five ranks. 28 Likewise, when Giun's disciple Sōka (n.d.) returned from a trip to Ching-te ssu (where he had performed memorial services for Ju-ching), he brought back a eulogy written by the Chinese Lin-chi monk Tu-ku Ch'un-p'eng that praised Giun's mastery of the five ranks. 29
Very little has been learned about the Zen practice of Jakuen or Giun. Obviously they promoted a strong devotion to the Sōtō lineage. Yet in their relationship with the Ijira family they performed ritualistic devotions to a wide variety of Buddhist divinities as prayers for the worldly success of their patrons. It would be a mistake, therefore, to assume that Giun, his teacher (Jakuen), or his lineage had kept Hōkyōji or Eiheiji untainted by the traditional religious practices accepted at other medieval Sōtō monasteries, such as Giin's Daijiji or Gikai's Daijōji.
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