ABSTRACT
A revered monk in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Hui Yuan was born into a family surnamed Jia in what is now Shanxi Province. In his youth he studied the Ruist and Taoist canons, and he was especially learned in the works of Laozi and Zhuangzi. At the age of twenty-one he became a monk under the tutelage of the Buddhist master Dao An, specializing in the study of the immateriality of the self and the world. In the year 381 he went to what is now Jiangxi Province where, for over thirty years until his death, he lived in seclusion in Donglin Monastery on Mount Lu. Like his mentor Dao An, Hui Yuan did not know Sanskrit, but he initiated the translation of a significant number of Buddhist sutras. He was an advocate of the Pure Land School of Hinayana Buddhism, and is considered the first patriarch of the school.
