Of the Wang 王 family, originally of Huguang; his father was a tax officer at Danyang and the family settled there. His mother dreamed a monk entered the door carrying a bundle. At seven he dreamed he sat in a crowd waving a whisk and expounding; his mother said 'that is how monks preach — one day you shall leave home'. At fourteen he was tonsured under Zhanran at Miaojue monastery, who asked him 'what have you come for?' — 'to become a Buddha', he said, and Zhanran marvelled. When Zhanran was transferred to Shushan he went to Songyin, teaching at Yunjian, and vowed in a small hermitage not to return until he had penetrated; after six days in samadhi he raised his head, saw a pine, and broke open. Thereafter he never slept, sitting like an iron banner — whence 'Chan of the iron spine'. At Xuanmu he met Guolin, who fitted him like needle to mustard-seed and then pointed him to BAOZANG CHI — the master under whom, after being scolded ('the dharma is like a great ocean, deeper the further in — why moor here?'), he broke through to the source of the dharma on the second night and received the charge. In 1404 he climbed Tianmu for a thousand-day retreat; in 1408 he came to Anxi, found the peaks fine, and stayed. He sat in retreat there more than thirty years, never leaving the mountain, and from 1427 built out the monastery — Dongming — until hundreds lived there. He died on the twenty-seventh of the sixth month of 1441, aged 70.
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