Of the Yuan (袁) family of Xianju in Taizhou, a Confucian household; born on the twelfth of the eighth month of 1347. At eight he entered the village school and could recite what he heard once; at twelve he asked to leave home and would not be dissuaded. An uncle who had become a monk took him to Ningbo, where Zuo'an Liang of Tiantong took him in; he was tonsured and took full precepts the following year. Serving Zuo'an brought him no opening, so he went to Tianning in the prefectural city, where LIAOTANG WEIYI was posing the 'broken sand-basin' case. Liaotang asked what he had come for; he said 'precisely because the matter of birth and death is urgent'; Liaotang told him to go and sit. One day Liaotang raised the cypress-tree-in-the-garden case, Puzhuang started to open his mouth, Liaotang slapped him across it — and he had his opening. In 1377 the throne ordered the monks of the empire to study the Heart, Lankavatara and Diamond sutras, and he was invited to lecture on them at Jinshan. He opened the hall at Beichan in Fuzhou in 1379 — and at that opening he burned the incense of gratitude for LIAOTANG. He rebuilt Yunju from ruins in five years. In 1393 he was summoned as one of the eminent monks of the realm, and that autumn was sent to Lushan to perform the imperial sacrifice; he was made sixtieth abbot of Jingshan. He died at Jingshan on the twenty-third of the tenth month of 1403, aged 58, with 45 years in robes.
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