Doui

Doui (道義, d. 825) is the master through whom Southern School Chan first entered the Korean peninsula and is reckoned the founder of the Gajisan school, the earliest of the Nine Mountain Schools (Gusan Seonmun) of Korean Seon^[1]. He travelled to Tang China in 784, received transmission from Xitang Zhizang at Mazu Daoyi's Hongzhou community, and returned to Silla in 821 carrying a teaching that the doctrinal establishment of his time received with hostility^[1]. Unable to teach publicly, he retired to Jinjeon-sa on Mount Seorak, where his lineage matured under his disciple Yeomgeo and became visible only after his death — a pattern, repeated across the next century by the other Mountain founders, that defined the Korean reception of Chan as a self-consciously meditative alternative to Silla's scholastic Buddhism^[2].