Liangshan Yuanguan

Liangshan Yuanguan was a Caodong school master who played an important role in the lineage that led to the school's revival. He taught on Mount Liangshan and maintained the Caodong tradition's contemplative emphasis during a period when the more verbally dramatic Linji school dominated the Chinese Chan landscape.

Liangshan is remembered in the koan literature for an exchange about a painting of a rhinoceros. When asked why the ox-herding pictures show a buffalo, Liangshan pointed to the image and said, "It is just this." His teaching style exemplified the Caodong approach of pointing directly to the thing itself, without the elaborate verbal exchanges that characterized the Linji tradition.