Koun Ejō

Koun Ejō
School	Sōtō
Personal
Born	1198
Died	1280
Senior posting
Title	Zen Master
Predecessor	Dōgen
Successor	Tettsū Gikai
Religious career
Teacher	Dōgen
Students	Jakuen Tettsū Gikai Gien Kangan Giin

Koun Ejō (孤雲懐奘^?) (1198-1280) was the second patriarch of the Japanese Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism who lived during the Kamakura period. He was initially a disciple of the short-lived Darumashū sect of Japanese Zen founded by Nōnin, but later studied and received dharma transmission under the Sōtō schools founder Dōgen. Today Ejō is considered Dōgen's spiritual successor by all existing branches of the Sōtō school. He is remembered today primarily as the author of the Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, a collection of informal talks by Dōgen which Ejō recorded throughout his discipleship. He is also featured prominently in the Denkōroku, the first major piece of scripture produced in the Sōtō school after Dōgen, with his transmission story serving as the final koan. After Dōgen's death, Ejō struggled to maintain leadership of the new Eihei-ji monastery, due in part to his lack of training in China that prevented him from completing the temple as a Chinese-style meditation hall, as well as unfamiliarity with Chinese-style monastic practices. He gave dharma transmission to Jakuen, Gikai, Gien and Giin, all of whom were originally students of Dōgen, but his failure to designate a clear heir himself led to a power struggle known as the sandai sōron that temporarily split the community.

Koun Ejō was born into the powerful Fujiwara clan in 1198 to an aristocratic family. His early education took place in Kyoto, after which he went to Mount Hiei to study Buddhism in the Tendai school while still young. In 1215, he was ordained as a monk and in 1218, he took the Bodhisattva vows at Enryaku-ji under his teacher Ennō. He would have studied Tendai and Shingon extensively, but dissatisfaction with these led him to examine Pure Land Buddhism. In 1219 he left Mount Hiei to study in the Jōdo school under Zennebō Shōku, a disciple of Hōnen, at Ōjō-in (now called Giō-ji). Apparently dissatisfied with the school, he left in 1222 or 1223 to study in the Daruma school, which had been founded by Dainichibō Nōnin about a decade before Koun Ejō's birth. His teacher, Kakuan, a disciple of Nōnin, had his community of monks in Tōnomine, outside Nara, apparently after having fled from Mount Hiei, where they had been persecuted by members of the Tendai school. Ejō is reported to have been a prominent student under Kakuan, but his time there was cut short in 1228 when representatives of the Tendai temple Kōfuku-ji in Nara burned down the buildings in the Daruma school temple complex, seemingly in response the perceived threat posed by its new teachings; the students were thus forced to disperse.

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