Linji master, dharma heir of Poshan Haiming. In his own account of conduct he says: 'I am a man of Yiliang county in Yunnan; my father's surname was Gu, my mother of the Shi clan. The family was poor and I did not read as a boy. At fourteen I left home, tonsured by the old master Shunyu at the Zhulin monastery on Zhuzishan.' At seventeen he was at Yuntai in southern Yunnan; at nineteen the thought of death and impermanence stirred in him. A travelling monk from Jizu gave him Zhaozhou's dog, and he worked at it for five years without an opening, then set it down and went off to recite the Buddha's name. Later Chan master Jifan drew him out — 'you say there is nothing to be done, but there is plainly one thing unfinished in your breast' — and struck him across the face, saying that to press a question to the point where nothing can be done is the point where strength comes, as a soldier who has lost his sword rides bare-handed at the enemy and takes his weapon from him and kills with it. At that he saw where old Zhaozhou had put his hand, and without so much as a bow he slapped his teacher across the mouth and pushed him out of the door, and Jifan shook himself and went off laughing. He became abbot of Kaifeng (Nanyun cloister) at Hengzhou. His heirs carried the line into Yunnan.
References: DILA Authority A019552
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