Lay surname Li, of Sanwu (Sanwu station); styled Biemu, childhood name Shanbao. He would not eat meat even in swaddling clothes, and as a small child, taken to the hermitage by his mother, would kneel with palms joined whenever he heard the sutras chanted. A dream at fifteen settled his resolve; his mother refused him, so he slipped away by night to Fuyuan hermitage and was tonsured by Hongjue. He took the novice precepts at Yishan, was set on 'the original face', and had an opening one day at the cry of a cat. He was fully ordained in 1659, followed Jingting to Yishan the next year, and in 1662 helped found Nanyuan. In conversation with his master one day he was seized with awe; at the fifth watch he heard the bell, the sweat poured off him, and everything he had held dissolved. He received transmission in 1677 and held Hongsheng at Nanyuan (Quanzhou) and Jisheng at Caoshan. Neither his death-year nor his lifespan is known; he was alive in 1697, aged sixty.
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