Hyech'ŏl

Hyech'ŏl (慧徹, 785–861) is the founder of the Tongnisan school, the second of the Nine Mountain Schools (Gusan Seonmun) of Korean Seon^[1]. He travelled to Tang China in 814, received transmission from Xitang Zhizang at Mazu Daoyi's Hongzhou community — the same teacher as Doui — and returned to Silla in 839 carrying the Southern School's sudden-awakening teaching^[1]. Where Doui's lineage matured slowly under suspicion of court Buddhism, Hyech'ŏl was received with royal patronage and established Tongnisa on Mount Tongnisan as one of the great training centres of the late Silla period. His teaching emphasised the inseparability of meditation and the doctrinal study of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra — a foreshadowing of the Sŏn-Hwaŏm synthesis that Pojo Chinul would systematise three centuries later^[2].