Background
Ryūki Ingen was also known as Yin-yuan Lung-ch’i, in Japanese pronunciation Ingen Ryuki, his family name was Lin and he was born in Fu-ch’ing in the province of Fukien in 1592.
Ryūki Ingen was also known as Yin-yuan Lung-ch’i, in Japanese pronunciation Ingen Ryuki, his family name was Lin and he was born in Fu-ch’ing in the province of Fukien in 1592.
He entered the priesthood at the age of twenty and began training at Mt. Pu-t’o-lo. At twenty-eight he went to Mt. Huang-po to study under the Zen Master Chien-ytian, later succeeding his master as head of the temple there and founding what is known as the Huang-po (Japanese: Obaku) school of Rinzai Zen. In 1654, ten years after the Ming dynasty was overthrown and the rulership of China had passed into the hands of the Ch’ing or Manchu dynasty, Yin-yuan was invited by the monk Itsuzen of the Kofuku-ji in Nagasaki to conic to Japan, an invitation that, probably because of the triumph of the Manchus over his homeland, he readily accepted.
He resided first at the Kofuku-ji and later at the Sofuku-ji and Fukusai-ji in Nagasaki and the Fumon-ji in the province of Settsu, where he gained considerable fame. In 1658 he took up residence in the Rinsho-ji in the Yushima section of Edo and was received in audience by Shogun Ietsuna, being granted permission to found a temple of his own at Uji, southeast of the city of Kyoto. This temple, called Mainpuku-ji of Mt. Obaku, became the first temple of the Obaku school of Rinzai Zen in Japan.
Yin-yuan enjoyed favor among the members of the imperial family and the court nobles, and when he fell ill in 1673 he was presented by Retired Emperor Gomizuno-o with the title Daiko Fumyo Kokushi. He died the same year at the age of eighty-one and was given the posthumous title Shinku Daishi.