Lanxi Daolong

Lanxi Daolong, or Rankei Doryu (c. 1213 - 1278) was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, idealist philosopher, and is the founder of the Kenchō-ji sect, which is a branch of the Rinzai school. Posthumous he was given the name Dajue Zen Master, which was Daikaku Zenji or just Daikaku in Japanese.

Lanxi Daolong

Quotes

• Zen practice is not clarifying conceptual distinctions, but throwing away one's preconceived views and notions and the sacred texts and all the rest, and piercing through the layers of coverings over the spring of self behind them. All the holy ones have turned within and sought in the self, and by this went beyond all doubt. To turn within means all the twenty-four hours and in every situation, to pierce one by one through the layers covering the self, deeper and deeper, to a place which cannot be described. It is when thinking comes to an end and making distinctions ceases, when wrong views and ideas disappear of themselves without having to be driven forth, when without being sought the true action and true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know what is the truth of the heart.
  • "Sayings of Daikaku" in: Trevor Leggett. Zen and the Ways, 1978. p. 58

• Thirty years and more
  I worked to nullify myself.
  Now I leap the leap of death.
  The ground churns up
  The skies spin round.
  • Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6; Cited in: Eugene Thacker. "Black Illumination: Zen and the poetry of death," Special to the JAPAN TIMES, July 2, 2016.

Quotes about Rankei Doryu

• [T]here are those poems so absorbed in the great unknown that death becomes nearly indistinguishable from life. The jisei [or dead poem] of Rankei Doryu, who died in 1278, reads [like that]... The death haiku of Choha, who died in 1740, also evokes this silence.

• Eugene Thacker. "Black Illumination: Zen and the poetry of death," Special to the JAPAN TIMES, July 2, 2016.