Born 1610 in Chongqing department, Chengdu, Sichuan, of the Hu clan; his mother dreamt of a foreign monk carrying a lotus-torch. He was tonsured at nine at Zhongfeng monastery in Guan county and served ten years, and at twenty went to Emei for full ordination. He left Sichuan in 1638 and travelled south, reaching Miyun Yuanwu at Tiantong in the winter of 1639; in 1642 he returned to Sichuan and met POSHAN HAIMING, who struck him across the head so hard that blood ran down his face — 'Do you understand?' — and everything that had blocked him melted at once. Poshan sent him on to Xiangya. At about forty, judging that his learning was thinning as his years grew, he abandoned everything and practised as one dead; sitting one night, he heard the door creak and 'the burden fell away.' He then went to DANGSHAN YUAN at Lumen in Xiangzhou, who tallied with him 'as needle to mustard-seed' and entrusted him with the true dharma eye. He presided over four monasteries — Shuangchi, Baishui, Baoshan and finally Huanglong on Mt Baizhang, Xiangyang, which he took in 1657 — for more than twenty years.
References: CBETA 語錄 J36nB356
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