Fayun Faxiu

Fǎyún Fǎxiù
School	Yunmen/Unmon
Personal
Born	1027
Died	1090
Senior posting
Title	Chán master
Predecessor	Tianyi Yihuai
Religious career
Teacher	Tianyi Yihuai
Students	Changlu Zongze

Fǎyún Fǎxiù (Chinese: 法雲法秀) or Fǎyún Yuántōng (Chinese: 法雲圓通 Japanese: Hōun Entsū) was a Chan Buddhist monk of Song Dynasty China. A follower of the Yunmen School, Faxiu had many friends among the educated elite, including scholars, writers, and painters, such as Huang Tingjian, Su Shi, Wang Shen, Wang Anshi, and Li Gonglin. He is also remembered for a quotation recorded by his student Changlu Zongze in the Chanyuan Qinggui, or The Rules of Purity in the Chan Monastery. In that influential text, he is quoted as saying that practitioners who meditate with closed eyes are in the "ghostly cave under the dark mountain". Dahong Baoen, a student of Touzi Yiqing, is said to have practiced with Faxiu, who recognized his promise in Zen practice.

Faxiu was a close friend of the Song Dynasty painter Li Gonglin, who depicted him in a painting called "Elegant Gathering in the Western Garden". As an apparently moralistic teacher, Faxiu taught his lay students in terms of karmic retribution, and he specifically urged Gonglin to give up painting horses lest he be reborn as one. Faxiu suggested he should instead repent by painting the Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara. He also was in contact with Huang Tingjian, whose writing he criticized for its "seductive language".Juefan Huihong, a contemporary monk, recorded that Faxiu had a famously bad temper. He wrote of Faxiu:

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