Born in Ise (Mie), he moved as a small child with his family to Kai (Yamanashi), and lost his mother early.
He entered a temple on Mount Hiraen in Kai and began studying Buddhism.
He was fully ordained at Tōdai-ji in Nara. He studied Tendai and other teachings, but on seeing a learned teacher die in anguish, he reportedly felt learning alone could not save, and turned to Zen.
In Kamakura he sought to study under Yishan Yining, a Zen master from Yuan China, passing an entrance test; but finding no satisfying answer, he pressed on with training.
Training under Kōhō Kennichi in Shimotsuke (Tochigi), he received recognition of his enlightenment at 30. Shunning fame, he then lived in hermitages in the mountains of Mino, Tosa and elsewhere.
He founded a hermitage at Kokeizan in Mino (Gifu), later Eihō-ji, whose garden making use of the natural terrain survives.
Invited by Emperor Go-Daigo, he became abbot of Nanzen-ji in Kyoto; later, invited by the Hōjō of Kamakura, he founded Zuisen-ji and other temples.
After the Kamakura shogunate fell he remained honored by Go-Daigo; soon the Ashikaga brothers Takauji and Tadayoshi also revered him, so that both sides of the coming conflict looked to him as teacher.
He urged Takauji and Tadayoshi to build an Ankoku-ji temple and a Rishō pagoda in each province to pray for all who had died in the wars.
When Go-Daigo died, he was chosen to found Tenryū-ji to console the emperor's spirit. That year he also redesigned the garden of Saihō-ji (the Moss Temple). His gardens deeply influenced later Japanese garden design.
To fund Tenryū-ji he advised the shogunate to send a trading ship to Yuan China (the Tenryū-ji ship).
He died at 76 amid the Kannō Disturbance between Takauji and Tadayoshi. Seven emperors, in his lifetime and after, granted him the title of National Teacher, so he is called "teacher of seven emperors". His many disciples made his line the center of Five Mountains Zen culture.
Emperor Go-DaigoAshikaga Takauji
Akamatsu Enshin (Norimura)Emperor Go-DaigoKitabatake ChikafusaKusunoki MasashigeSasaki DōyoKō no MoronaoNitta YoshisadaAshikaga Takauji
People of the Muromachi period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.