Guizong Cezhen

Guizong Cezhen (歸宗策真, d. 979) was an early Five-Dynasties / Northern-Song Fayan-house teacher in the line descending from Fayan Wenyi, abbot of Guizong-si on Mount Lu in modern Jiangxi^[1]. He is to be distinguished from the earlier and better-attested Guizong Zhichang of the mid-eighth century, a Mazu disciple at the same temple; lamp records and modern reconstructions both treat the two figures as separate, though they share the temple-name epithet^[2].

The Guizong-si on Mount Lu (Lushan, in modern Jiangxi) was one of the most historically layered Chan sites in China, having housed generations of teachers across multiple lineages. Cezhen's abbacy there in the second half of the tenth century placed him within the Fayan house's most active period of expansion from its base in the Wuyue and Southern Tang kingdoms^[3]. The Fayan house under Fayan Wenyi and his heirs Tiantai Deshao and Yongming Yanshou cultivated a notably ecumenical approach — engaging Huayan philosophy and, in Yanshou's case, Pure Land practice — and Cezhen's tenure at the storied Guizong-si reflects the house's broad institutional reach in the generation before the Song reunification absorbed the Five-Dynasties polities^[4].