Fa-yen wen-i

Founder of one of the so-called ‘Five Houses’ of Chinese Ch'an. It was, in fact, he who first coined the term ‘Five Houses’ to refer to the major schools of Ch'an in his day. Ironically, the ‘House of Fa-yen’, based in the Ch'in-liang Temple near modern Nanking, did not last beyond the next generation, in which Fa-yen's own predilection for doctrinal studies led his most eminent followers to allow the line to be absorbed by T'ien-t'ai.