HUIYUAN (334–416), more fully Shi Huiyuan or Lüshan Huiyuan, Chinese Buddhist monk. Born to a literati family named Jia in Yanmen (Shanxi province), Huiyuan went to Henan at the age of thirteen to study both the Confucian classics and the Laozi and Zhuangzi. When he was twenty he met the eminent Buddhist monk Dao'an (312–385), whose personality and explanation of the philosophy of the "perfection of wisdom" (Skt., prajñāpāramitā) impressed him so much that he embraced Buddhism and became his disciple. He remained with Dao'an for twenty-four years, residing mostly at Xiangyang. In 378 the invading Qin army forced master and disciple to separate. Huiyuan went south and eventually settled on Mount Lü in Jiangxi, where one of his colleagues from his days in Xiangyang, Huiyong, interceded on his behalf to have the Donglin Monastery built for him around 384. He remained there until his death thirty years later...