Of Xin'an; lay surname Bao (鮑). His father Bao Qinjiao was a prefectural student; his mother dreamed of a tablet reading 'Hall of Accumulated Good' before she conceived. Born on the twenty-fourth of the tenth month of 1623. He failed the examinations at eighteen, and at nineteen left his parents for Jinling, met a monk on the road who urged him to practise, and was tonsured at Yixing. At twenty he took the full precepts from Zhuanyu Guanheng at Qingliang monastery in the capital. He heard friends talk of the Chan gate, read the Changuan cejin, threw over doctrinal study and went to Lingao at Yaofeng in Suzhou, then to Shiyu Mingfang at Dongta monastery in Jiaxing, where — after a fortnight with an unbreakable doubt-mass and a night without sleep — the great drum sounded at dawn in the Buddha hall and his chest fell open. THE HEAD MONK OF THAT ASSEMBLY WAS HIS OWN MASTER-TO-BE, JIE'AN [WUJIN]. He went on to Feiyin Tongrong at Jinsu and traded pushes with him on the abbot's steps. His transmission, however, came from JIE'AN WUJIN (介菴悟進) of Jinming monastery in Jiaxing, and he says so from the seat, at the opening of the hall, in the reverential form. He was abbot at Huanglian and at Qizhou. He belongs to the DUANQIAO (斷橋) branch of Linji — a rare surviving line outside the Miyun Yuanwu mainstream — and calls his master the thirty-first generation of it.
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