Nanyuan Huiyong

Nanyuan Huiyong was a student of Xinghua Cunjiang who maintained the Linji lineage during a period when the school's survival was uncertain. He taught at Nanyuan Temple and is credited with keeping the transmission alive through a time when other Chan schools were more prominent. His principal student was Fengxue Yanzhao, through whom the lineage continued.

Nanyuan's teaching preserved the essential character of Linji Chan—the use of shouts, blows, and paradoxical exchanges to break through the student's conceptual mind. His recorded dialogues, though fewer in number than those of more famous masters, demonstrate the same quality of fierce immediacy that characterized the school from its founding. He represents the crucial middle generation that bridged Linji's original teaching to its later flourishing.