Ruoan Tongwen 箬菴通問

School: Linji | 1604–1655 | Teacher: Tianyin Yuanxiu | Students: Tianli Xingzhen, Huangbo Yi'an Yue

From Songling in Wujiang, lay surname Yu, born 1604 into a bookish family — his father owned a cartload of books. Passing a mountain temple at sixteen he saw the Surangama and was troubled by it; he went to Tianyin Yuanxiu at Qingshan, who gave him 'your face before your parents were born'. He was tonsured at twenty-four at Li'an under Foshi, went to Miyun Yuanwu at Jinsu — 'fire-snakes burned my face, my bones and hair went cold' — and returned to Qingshan, where he awakened one night in a gale on the cliff. He held Li'an at Nanjian for ten years, and Zhulin, Longyou and Guloutze. He died in 1655 at Yingtian monastery in Wujiang, aged fifty-two. He compiled the Xudeng cungao. A dharma-brother of Yulin Tongxiu, the Shunzhi emperor's teacher.

References: DILA Authority A013268

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