Yunju Daoying

Yunju Daoying (雲居道膺, d. 902) was the principal Dharma heir of Dongshan Liangjie alongside Caoshan Benji, and the figure through whom the main line of the Caodong house actually descended — the line that, after Caoshan's branch petered out within two generations, carried the school forward through the Northern and Southern Song^[1]. He established a large community on Mount Yunju in modern Jiangxi, which became the most institutionally well-established Caodong centre of the late ninth and tenth centuries^[2].

Yunju's teaching emphasised the quiet, unadorned *zazen*-centered style that the Caodong house would systematise as *mòzhào chán* under Hongzhi Zhengjue and as *shikantaza* under Dōgen. His line passed through Tongan Daopi, Tongan Guanzhi, Liangshan Yuanguan, Dayang Jingxuan, and the late-eleventh-century Caodong revival around Touzi Yiqing, Furong Daokai, and Hongzhi — making Yunju the proximate ancestor of every later Caodong / Sōtō teacher^[3].