Kechimyaku (血脈) is a Japanese term for a lineage chart in Zen Buddhism and some other Japanese schools, documenting the "bloodline" of succession of various masters or listing priests in a particular school. In Zen, the kechimyaku theoretically links a student to all previous generations back to the Buddha himself. In the Sōtō school of medieval Japan, it became commonplace for the kechimyaku to be administered to lay students for such rituals as the jukai ceremony. Traditionally, this document is administered at the time of Dharma transmission in Soto Zen, during a shiho ceremony. In the Jodo Shinshu sect, the kechimyaku is meant to demonstrate "spiritual descent", and not a blood heritage.
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Kechimyaku in the context of Dharma transmission
In Chan and Zen Buddhism, dharma transmission is a custom in which a person is established as a "successor in an unbroken lineage of teachers and disciples, a spiritual 'bloodline' (kechimyaku) theoretically traced back to the Buddha himself." The dharma lineage reflects the importance of family-structures in ancient China, and forms a symbolic and ritual recreation of this system for the monastic "family".
In Rinzai-Zen, inka shōmei (印可証明) is ideally "the formal recognition of Zen's deepest realisation", but practically it is being used for the transmission of the "true lineage" of the masters (shike) of the training halls. There are only about fifty to eighty of such inka shōmei-bearers in Japan.