Pŏmil

Pŏmil (梵日, 810–889) is the founder of the Saguelsan school, another of the Nine Mountain Schools of Korean Seon^[1]. He travelled to Tang China in 831 and received transmission from Yanguan Qi'an, a senior heir of Mazu Daoyi^[1]. After fifteen years in China — including the disruption of the Huichang persecution of Buddhism (842–846) — he returned to Silla and established Gulsansa on Mount Saguelsan. Pŏmil's lineage was distinctive for cultivating close ties with the eastern Korean coast and the burgeoning trade networks with Japan; his successors maintained the school as one of the longest-running Mountain communities, and the Goryeo-era hagiographies preserve his teaching that the awakening transmitted to him in China is identical to the awakening of Mahākāśyapa under the Bodhi tree — a characteristic Mountain-school assertion of unbroken patriarchal lineage^[2].