Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157). Author of the Book of Serenity (Equanimity), studied under Yuanwu among others.
Perhaps you are remembering what I said of Daman Hongren the 5th Patriarch and most prominent teacher of the East Mountain teaching (sometimes called the Northern school). The period of the patriarchs was largely mythological, the zen characters that followed pointed at this period, but I am not sure this is where you would start a study of zen.
But maybe I did question even Hongzhi, for his connection to the Song period orthodox literati.
Hongzhi's father, Congdao, was a pious Buddhist householder. He was a disciple of Desun, himself a disciple of Huanglong Huinan (d.1069), an important Linji master. He was also a member of the literati, and Hongzhi recieved a solid Confucian education (2004:185). The Linji school was very popular with Buddhist sympathizers amongst the Confucian literati, and Hongzhi's father was apparently involved in this trend. Hongzhi became a monastic at the age of 11. He was given the ordination name Zhengjue, True Awakening. He was a novice in the Huanglong line of Linji Chan, but at 18 he went to Ruzhou in modern Hunan Province and entered the monastery of the eminent Caodong Chan master Kumu Faqeng (1071-1128) (Foster, Shoemaker 1996: 176). Kumu's style is exemplified by his name, Dead Tree. This name comes from a favoured symbol of Caodong literature. For example, in an exchange in the Chuandeng lu biography of the house's traditional co-founder, Caoxan Benji (840-901), we read the following: Asked about the Way, an earlier master had said, “In a dead tree, a dragon sings.” [ie. in a silenced body and mind the mind of awakening is realized]. When Caoxan was questioned on this, he replied with a poem that began, “The person who says the dragon sings in the dead tree is really one who knows the Way.” Another of the house's earlier masters gained a reputation for teaching kumu Chan, and his community was dubbed the Dead Tree Assembly after its members practice of long hours of seated meditation (ibid).
After studying with Kumu for a few years Hongzhi travelled to Xiangshan, where he experienced a breakthrough:
One day as the monks on Mt. Xiang chanted the Lotus Sutra, Hongzhi was instantly enlightened upon hearing the phrase, “Your eye that existed before your parents birth sees everything in three thousand realms.”
http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/HistoricalZen/Bright_Field_of_Spirit_Hongzhi.html
Some may not find these details interesting, but for me, they show that the world that Hongzhi grew up in and lived in was very different indeed than what Mazu through Fayan (730 to 950 CE) had seen.
Considering that within a century of Hongzhi's death, the zen that I am interested in had virtually disappeared, that the printing blocks for the Blue Cliff Record were burned, and then remade, considering that the Buddhist orthodoxy that continued on has tended to control the narriative, can you blame me for wondering about Hongzhi?
But then, the study of the zen characters does not have to be pursued in the old way of setting up heroes and putting down villains. In 2015, what are we going to do with that?
Try to resurrect some kind of proper tradition after centuries of fakes have demonstrated how these institutions were bastions of retardation since 1250 CE?
No, the sparkle that doesn't wear off is the sparkle of questioning that stayed alive in the zen characters for as long as it did, the questioning, the seeing, the freedom they pointed at, that which they delighted in and played with. No institution can hold that.
So, after all this time, its not up to me to accept or reject Hongzhi. Its up to each of us to look at him, and then look at what we want to do with it.