Of the Zhuang clan of Jiangdu, Yangzhou; his father Jifang, his mother of the Shi clan, who dreamed an old monk lodged with her before his birth. Born on the seventeenth day of the third month of 1612. He lost his father at thirteen and, wondering where the dead go, resolved to leave home. At twenty he was tonsured at Zhongshan in Jinling; the next year he went to Ruibai Mingxue at Bianshan and asked how to settle birth-and-death. 'Who gives you birth-and-death?' — 'I don't know.' — 'What have you been practising?' — 'Reciting the Buddha's name.' — 'Who recites? And what is the Buddha?' He was left with nothing to say, and the doubt grew. Sitting the summer at Jiezhu, he looked up one night at a man lighting a lamp and broke open. Ruibai tested him hard and beat him repeatedly before acknowledging him. When lineage-forgery was rife, Ruibai had him open the canon and compile the Chuandeng zhenge, fixing the genealogy of the five houses. He opened the dharma at Yanshou in Puqi in 1654 and held Yunyan at Ningzhou, Yaoshan and others. He died on the twenty-fourth day of the intercalary seventh month of 1672, aged 61; forty men received his dharma.
References: DILA Authority A010055
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