death_date predecessor successor birth_place teacher color title students article_title background birth_date image school name
827 -lrb- age 82 -rrb- shitou xiqian yunyan tansheng jiangxi , china shitou xiqian mazu daoyi black chán master yunyan tansheng daowu yuanzhi yaoshan weiyan
 #ffd 068 745 yaoshan_weiyan_image . jpg chán yaoshan weiyan 藥 山 惟 儼
yaoshan weiyan

yaoshan weiyan -lrb- ; hànyǔ pīnyīn : yàoshān wéiyǎn ; -rrb- was a zen buddhist monk who lived during the tang dynasty .
as with most monks of the tang dynasty , there are conflicting lines of evidence concerning yaoshan 's life .
the earliest biographical information comes from tang shen , who wrote yaoshan 's epitaph in 834 , seen years after his death .
while he is traditionally regarded as a student of shitou xiqian , tang shen 's inscription mentions that he stayed with mazu daoyi for nearly twenty years .
it also mentions shitou as his teacher , however .
some scholars consider the epitaph to be a later forgery , although many elements of it agree with other sources .
a story dating to the middle of the eleventh century relates an encounter between yaoshan and shitou in which yaoshan failed to awaken , but a later visit to mazu results in his enlightenment .
this is almost certainly a fanciful jibe at shitou and praise for mazu , however .
a story involving yaoshan is frequently referenced in the writing of dōgen , the founder of the sōtō school in japan .
the story is as follows : according to carl bielefeldt , a religious studies professor at stanford university , this passage encapsulates the essence of dōgen 's teaching on `` zazen '' .
because of this , it is referenced frequently in his works , such as in in the shōbōgenzō , eihei kōroku , and most prominently his early work the fukanzazengi .
