Late-Ming Buddhist scholar-monk, zì Yànmén 鴈門 (after his native region in north Shānxī); resident later at the Shízhào shānfáng 石照山房 of Mount Lúshān 廬山. Lifedates unknown; documented activity in the late Wànlì 萬曆 era — the Qǐxìn lùn jiéyào 起信論捷要 (KR6o0115) was composed in 萬曆甲寅 (Wànlì 42 / 1614 — the DILA note misreads this as 1214) at the prompting of his teacher Kāixiān Mèishī 開先昧師 of Mount Lú.
According to the autobiographical preface to the Jiéyào (X45n763), Zhèngyuǎn began his career studying both the xìng 性 and xiàng 相 (Tathāgatagarbha and Yogācāra) traditions extensively but felt himself “like a deaf man straining to hear gnats from a hundred paces beyond”. After meeting his teacher Kāixiān at Mount Lú in 戊申 (1608), he applied himself again, and in summer 1614 was instructed by Kāixiān to “read the Qǐxìn lùn thoroughly until you understand its real meaning”. After ten days of intensive reading shut up in his cell, he experienced a sudden clarification of the text “as if seeing it on his palm”, and produced the Jiéyào as the record of that breakthrough.
His one extant work is the Qǐxìn lùn jiéyào 起信論捷要 KR6o0115 (X45n763), 2 juǎn, in the late-Ming Buddhist jiéyào (“essential digest”) genre — a condensed reading-key designed to make the Awakening of Faith immediately accessible without the apparatus of the long Tang and Sòng commentaries.
Sources: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A000275; Qǐxìn lùn jiéyào preface (X45n0763, p. 0367c03).