SIDDARTHA GAUTAMA

The Buddha was a real person named Siddhartha Gautama, who lived 2,600 years ago. He was born the son of a king in Lumbini, Nepal. Prince Siddhartha lived in luxury, but at the age of 29, all that changed—he renounced his royal life and began a spiritual quest. Over many years, his journey led him to believe that the path to enlightenment was achieved through discipline of the mind. In the modern Indian state of Bihar, at Bodh Gaya, Siddhartha sat in meditation beneath a ficus tree. This is where he had his awakening and realized enlightenment.

MASTER TANG HOI

Master Tang Hoi was born sometime in the first decade of the third century. The date of his death has been recorded at 280 C.E.  When Tang Hoi was only ten years old, both his parents passed away, and he was accepted in a local temple as a young novice in a monastery in Luy Lau, the capital of Jiaozhou, in the province of Bac Ninh in what is now northern Vietnam.

Tang Hoi established a practice center in Jianye called the First Temple, also known as Buddha‘s Center. He organized ordination ceremonies and natives were allowed to practice as Buddhist monks.

MASTER LINJI YIXUAN

Linji Yixuan probably was born about 810 CE and died in 866, which was near the end of the Tang Dynasty. Linji was born into a family named Xing in Caozhou, which he left at a young age to study Buddhism in many places. Linji was trained by the Chan master Huángbò Xīyùn. In 851 CE, he moved to the Linji temple in Hebei, where he took his name, which also became the name for the lineage of his form of Chán Buddhism.

​The Linji School best was known for its eccentric style of teaching. Teachers shouted, grabbed, struck, and otherwise manhandled students as a means to shock them into awakening. This must have been effective, as Linji became the dominant school of Chan during the Song Dynasty.

MASTER LIEU QUAN

Master Lieu Quan was born in the village of Bac Ma in the Phu Yen province, in Vietnam, in 1670. He lost his mother at the age of six. His father used to bring him to the Hoi Ton Temple, where he met the abbot, Te Vien. At the age of ten, he was accepted in the temple as a novice. He studied with Te Vien for nine years. When Master Te Vien passed away, Lieu Quan went to the far away province of Thuan Hoa (now Hue) to study with the Master Giac Phong at the Thien Tho Temple, now called Bao Quoc. He was ordained as a bhiksu in 1697 at the age of twenty-seven.

In 1702, he met Master Tu Dung and began to study with him at the An Tong Temple in Thua Thien. For five years, he was given the Cong an: “All dharmas return to the one. Where will the one return to?”
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Lieu Quan was thirty-eight when he received lamp transmission and he then established the Thien Tong Meditation Center.

In the years 1733-1735, four national ceremonies of ordination were organized in the Thua Thien province over which Master Lieu Quan presided. The number of his disciples were as many as 4000. The Phu Yen province is one of the strongholds of the school, along with the Hoi Tong, Co Lam, and Bo Tinh temples.

MASTER THICH NHAT HANH

Born in central Vietnam in 1926, Thich Nhat Hanh entered Tu Hieu Temple, in Hue city, as a novice monk at the age of sixteen. As a young bhikshu (monk) in the early 1950s, he was actively engaged in the movement to renew Vietnamese Buddhism. When war came to Vietnam, monks and nuns were confronted with the question of whether to adhere to the contemplative life and stay meditating in the monasteries, or to help those around them suffering under the bombings and turmoil of war. Thich Nhat Hanh was one of those who chose to do both, and in doing so founded the Engaged Buddhism movement, coining the term in his book Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. His life has since been dedicated to the work of inner transformation for the benefit of individuals and society. 

If you received the Five Precepts from Thich Nhat Hanh, your lineage name, if you asked to receive one, begins with the word Tam, “Mind” or “Heart,” and you belong to the ninth generation of the Lieu Quan School of Zen, and the forty-third generation of the Linji (Japanese: Rinzai) school of Zen.