Chijue Daochong 癡絕道沖

School: Linji | 1169–1250 | Teacher: Caoyuan Daosheng

Named Daochong, self-styled Chijue ('utter fool'), of the Gou clan of Changjiang in Wuxin (Sichuan); his mother was surnamed Guo. He sat the jinshi examinations and failed, then took Buddhist learning at Miaoyin cloister in Zizhou, was tonsured by Xiuzheng, and studied the treatises at Dasheng Ci monastery in Chengdu. Out of the gorges in 1192, he found Caoyuan Daosheng and had a first opening under him. Songyuan at Lingyin then refused him a place for eight months and finally said: 'I threw the door wide open for him — he walked straight past it,' at which Daochong lost both mouth and ears and understood that Caoyuan's jeering and scolding at Miaoguo and Guifeng had been the whole teaching all along. He held Tianning, Jiangshan, Xuefeng, Lingyin, Fahua and Shuangjing, and was the thirty-sixth abbot of Ayuwang. He died on the fifteenth of the third month, 1250, aged eighty-two, sixty-one years a monk.

References: DILA Authority A001507

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