Shànzhāo 善昭
Línjì-school Chán master of the early Northern Sòng, conventionally styled Fényáng Shànzhāo 汾陽善昭 after his long residence at the Tàipíng 太平 monastery at Fényáng 汾陽 in Hédōng 河東 (present-day Shānxī). Posthumous title Wúdé chánshī 無德禪師. Lifedates per DILA: 946 — Tiānshèng 1 (1023), xìshì 78. Standard secondary sources (Yanagida, McRae) often give 947–1024; the discrepancy stems from lunar / solar year reconciliation.
Dharma-heir of Shǒushān Xǐngniàn 首山省念 (926–993), in the line descending from Fēngxué Yánzhǎo 風穴延沼 and ultimately Xīnghuà Cúnjiǎng 興化存獎 to Línjì Yìxuán (義玄). At a moment of demographic thinness in the Línjì line — Fēngxué is famously reported to have feared that “the Línjì Way will fall to the ground in me” — Shànzhāo is the figure whose pedagogy revitalised the school and established the doctrinal apparatus that structured later Línjì pedagogy: the shízhì tóngzhēn 十智同真, an influential set of paired-verse commentaries on old encounter-dialogue cases (gōng’àn sòng 公案頌), and a codified use of the shout (hē 喝). His recorded sayings are preserved in three juan as the Fényáng Wúdé chánshī yǔlù (KR6q0054), compiled by his dharma-heir 楚圓 Shíshuāng Chǔyuán. Through Chǔyuán and the next generation — Huánglóng Huìnán 黃龍慧南 and Yángqí Fānghuì 楊岐方會 — Shànzhāo’s teaching line became effectively the whole of the later Línjì school.