Hui-kuang

Hui-kuang 慧光 (468–537) (PY Huiguang;  Ekō): The founder of the Fourfold Rules of Discipline (Ssu-fen-lü) school in China.

In 480 he became a priest and studied chiefly the Buddhist vinaya, or rules of monastic discipline, propagating the precepts set forth in The Fourfold Rules of Discipline, the vinaya of the Dharmagupta school.

When Bodhiruchi and Ratnamati translated The Treatise on the Ten Stages Sutra into Chinese, Hui-kuang assisted in its translation and wrote a commentary on this treatise.

He is therefore also regarded as the founder of the Treatise on the Ten Stages Sutra (Ti-lun) school, which took that treatise as its foundational text. Later he was appointed national superintendent of priests and called discipline master of the nation.

Among the teachers of the three schools of the south and seven schools of the north, he was one of the seven teachers of the north and lived just prior to T’ien-t’ai’s birth in 538.

His works include The Annotations on the Benevolent Kings Sutra and The Annotations on “The Fourfold Rules of Discipline.”