Of Xiushui in Jiaxing, the Gu clan of Xincheng; mother of the Zou clan, the middle of three sons. The family was too poor for the schooling he wanted, and he lit up whenever a monk passed the door; his parents sent him to Songyuan hermitage at Jingshan. At nineteen he took tonsure and full precepts from the great master Wengu at Zhenji, shut himself up for three years with the Huayan commentary, then made a name in the lecture halls — 'the assemblies called me a horned tiger', he says, but he did not trust it. In 1637 he met the master Xue at Jingshan and was undone by one question; they exchanged poems on the pond for ten years. Later he saw Xueguan and Yongjue without spark; then Juelang; and finally, under Feiyin Tongrong at Jingshan, he broke through one night at the sound of a door. He became abbot of Puming at Jiaxing. Sixty in the winter of 1673.
References: DILA Authority A016402
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