Jakuen

Jakuen (寂円, 1207–1299), also rendered Jiyuan in Chinese sources, was a Chinese-born Sōtō master and a fellow disciple of Dōgen under Tiantong Rujing at the Tiantong-shan monastery in Southern Song China^[1]. He travelled to Japan after Rujing's 1228 death and served as caretaker of Rujing's jōyōden memorial hall at Eihei-ji under Dōgen and then Koun Ejō; the formal Dharma transmission he received in Japan came from Ejō rather than directly from Dōgen. He left Eihei-ji in 1261 during the *sandai sōron* dispute and was given the temple Hōkyō-ji in Echizen by Hatano Tomanari in 1278, modelled on Tiantong-shan^[1][2].

Jakuen's lineage is a distinct parallel stream in early Japanese Sōtō: his Dharma heir Giun (1253–1333) became the 5th abbot of Eihei-ji from 1314, and Jakuen's line — not Keizan's — actually controlled Eihei-ji from 1314 until 1468, when the Keizan branch took ownership^[2]. Hōkyō-ji remains a parallel Sōtō sub-line, officially in communion with the modern Sōtōshū but historically regarding Jakuen rather than Keizan as its founding patriarch.