Dachuan Puji 大川普濟

School: Linji | 1179–1253 | Teacher: Zhewong Ruyan

Named Puji, self-styled Dachuan, of the Zhang clan of Liuzhao in Fenghua; the youngest of three sons, given by his parents to the dharma. He was tonsured at nineteen at Xianglin cloister under Wenxian, studied vinaya and then Tiantai doctrine at Chicheng, and gave it up: 'Binding the body with precepts, splitting hairs over doctrine — how does that get past birth and death?' At Nengren in Yue he met Zhewong Ruyan, who asked where he was from, snatched away his sitting-cloth and struck him — and he came free on the spot. He held eight abbacies, ending at Jingci and Lingyin, and while at Lingyin compiled the Wudeng huiyuan (1252), the great synthesis of the five lamp records. He died on the eighteenth of the first month, 1253, aged seventy-five, having forbidden an expensive funeral and ordered his bones thrown in the river.

References: DILA Authority A001234

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