20 Facts About Yunmen Wenyan

Yunmen Wenyan, was a major Chinese Chan master of the Tang dynasty.

The Yunmen Wenyan school flourished into the early Song Dynasty, with particular influence on the upper classes, and eventually culminating in the compilation and writing of the Blue Cliff Record.

Yunmen Wenyan was born in the town of Jiaxing near Suzhou and southwest of Shanghai to the Zhang family, apparently in 864 CE.

Yunmen Wenyan studied there for several years, taking his monastic vows at age 20, in 883 CE.

The third time he went the gate was opened slightly by Muzhou, and thus Yunmen Wenyan stuck his leg in attempting to gain entrance.

Daoming told Yunmen Wenyan to visit the pre-eminent Chan master of the day, Xuefeng Yicun of Mount Xianggu, in Fuzhou in modern-day Fujian Province, and become his disciple, as Daoming was by then too old to further teach Yunmen Wenyan.

When Xuefeng Yicun died, Yunmen Wenyan began travelling and visited quite a number of monasteries, cementing his reputation as a Chan master.

The area of Southern China where Yunmen Wenyan lived broke free during the rebellion of Huang Chao, a viceroy of the Liu family.

The king acquiesced, and five years later, at the age of 64, Yunmen Wenyan began living in and teaching in the monastery on the mountain from which he took the name by which he is best known.

One day, when Yunmen Wenyan was 85 or 86, he composed a farewell letter to his patron, the new king of the Southern Han, and gave a final lecture to his monks, finishing with the statement:.

Yunmen Wenyan would be buried with great honors, and his well-preserved corpse was exhumed several years later, and given a procession.

Yunmen Wenyan was renowned for his forceful and direct yet subtle teaching, often expressed through sudden shouts and blows with a staff, and for his wisdom and skill at oratory:.

An apocryphal anecdote that began circulating around the beginning of the 12th century has Yunmen Wenyan going so far as to forbid any of his sayings or teachings from being recorded by his many pupils:.

When Master Yunmen Wenyan expounded the Dharma he was like a cloud.

Yunmen Wenyan decidedly did not like people to note down his words.

Eight of Yunmen Wenyan's sayings are included in Book of Equanimity, and five in The Gateless Gate:.

The Yunmen Wenyan School flourished as one of the Five Schools for about 300 years, after which it was absorbed into the Linji school towards the end of the Southern Song dynasty.

Yunmen Wenyan rebuilt the Yunmen Temple as well as Huineng's temple, Nanhua Temple.

The Yunmen Wenyan school continues through Master Hsu Yun, Fo Yuan, and Master Ming Zhao Shakya, who have disciples in America and abroad.

Yunmen Wenyan's Japanese name, Ummon, was the namesake for a prominent character in Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos science fiction series; Simmon's Ummon was a vastly advanced AI from the "TechnoCore", who reveals key plot elements to the main characters through koans and mondo.