Gomyō 護命 (750–834) — Foundational patriarch of the early-Heian Japanese Hossō 法相 (Yogācāra / Cí’ēn) school, Sōjō 僧正 (chief monk) of Gangō-ji 元興寺 in Nara, and one of the senior Buddhist clerics of the Tenchō 天長 court (834: the era’s most authoritative Buddhist voice). Native of Yamato Province. He is conventionally identified as the chief representative of the Nan-ji 南寺 (“Southern Temple”) branch of Japanese Hossō, centred at Gangō-ji — in distinction from the Hoku-ji 北寺 (“Northern Temple”) branch centred at Kōfuku-ji that crystallised over the same period.
Gomyō received the imperial commission of Tenchō 7 (= 830) to “submit the school’s doctrinal essentials” to the throne, and at the age of eighty he composed Dàchéng fǎxiāng yánshén zhāng 大乘法相研神章 (KR6t0005, T71n2309), a five-fascicle Hossō summa that is one of the principal early-Japanese Yogācāra systematic works. The work’s preface explicitly dates it to 830 and confirms his age. Gomyō served as Sōjō until his death in 834.
He is also conventionally associated with the institutional consolidation of Gangō-ji as the headquarters of Japanese Hossō scholasticism, and with the early Heian polemics against the hongaku (intrinsic-enlightenment) currents of Tendai. He should not be confused with the Gomyō of the Tendai school active a generation later.
DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001962; Wikidata Q11367385.
Works:
- KR6t0005 Dàchéng fǎxiāng yánshén zhāng 大乘法相研神章 (T71n2309), 5 fasc. — composed Tenchō 7 (830) at age 80, in response to the imperial commission to submit doctrinal essentials.