Furong Daokai

Who is Furong Daokai?

Furong Daokai, was a Zen Buddhist monk during the Song Dynasty. He was born is a city known at the time as Yizhou, which is the present-day city of Linyi in the southern part of Shandong Province. Along with his fellow student Dahong Baoen, Daokai is considered to have returned the Caodong/Sōtō Zen lineage to prominence after its near extinction a generation earlier. He was so prominent, in fact, that an extensive biography appeared in the Xudeng lu, a compendium of biographies of prominent monks, in 1101, before he had even reached the height of his career, which was quite unusual for such biographies. The earliest full account of his life appears in Juefan Huihong's biographical compilation of 1119, the Chanlin sengbao zhuan. This source speak very highly of Daokai, despite the fact that its author was a member of the competing Rinzai school. According to his funerary inscription of 1127, he ordained 93 students during his life, and many of these went on to become prominent teachers themselves.