Shido Bunan

Shidō Bunan (至道無難, 1603–1676) was the Dharma heir of Gudō Tōshoku at Myōshin-ji and is among the most-quoted Edo-period Rinzai writers, almost entirely on the strength of a single verse: *Ikinagara shinde nari hatete, omou mama ni furumaeba yoshi* — "Die while alive, and be completely dead; then do as you will, all is good"^[1]. The poem, preserved in his *Sokushinki* and copied through generations of Rinzai students, became one of the standard utterances of the *Rinka* school's insistence on the primacy of complete existential transformation over technique^[2].

His historical importance is also lineal: Bunan's heir Shōju Rōjin (Dōkyō Etan) was the master under whom Hakuin Ekaku underwent the harsh post-kenshō training that opened his mature realisation, so Bunan stands as Hakuin's Dharma-grandfather and the immediate forerunner of the eighteenth-century Rinzai revival^[3].