Jingzhong Shenhui

Jingzhong Shenhui (淨眾神會, 720–794) — not to be confused with the more famous Heze Shenhui (684–758) of the Southern School — was the successor of Wuxiang at Jingzhong Temple in Chengdu and the third-generation leader of the Sichuan Jingzhong lineage^[1]. Early-Chan documentation, especially the Dunhuang *Lìdài Fǎbǎo Jì*, treats him as Wuxiang's principal heir and as a competing claimant in eighth-century debates over the criteria for orthodox Chan transmission^[2].

Shenhui of Jingzhong is one of two distinct Tang Chan masters bearing the same Dharma name, and modern scholarship from Yanagida Seizan onward has worked to keep them separate: the Sichuanese Shenhui inherited the Jingzhong formula of *wuyi*, *wunian*, *mowang*, while the homonymous Heze Shenhui championed Huineng as Sixth Patriarch in the capital^[3]. His career illustrates how thoroughly the Sichuan branch participated in — and was eventually overshadowed by — the polemics that produced the Southern School orthodoxy.