Chōsai ［長西］ (1184–1266): Also known as Kakumyō. A priest of the Japanese Pure Land (Jōdo) school and founder of that school’s Kuhon-ji branch. Born in Sanuki Province, he became a disciple of the school’s founder, Hōnen, at age nineteen. After Hōnen’s death, he became a disciple of Shōkū, the founder of the Seizan branch of the Pure Land school. He furthered his studies, learning the meditation of the Tendai school from Shunjō and Zen doctrines from Dōgen. Later he lived at Kuhon-ji temple in Kyoto and maintained that, in addition to the Nembutsu, or chanting of Amida Buddha’s name, other practices could help one achieve rebirth in the Pure Land. As a result, he departed from Hōnen’s doctrine that only the Nembutsu enables one to be reborn in Amida’s paradise, and that all the other practices should be abandoned. He wrote The Doctrine of the Original Vow in the Nembutsu. Kakushin and Rien were his disciples.