Fourth, the Lotus-root Yizhixu

The Lotus-root Yizhixu (1599-1655 AD), commonly known as Zhong, Zhenzhi, alias the "Eight Noble Taoists", was a native of Mudu, Wu County, now Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.

Zhixu was also a Confucian, and at the beginning was as extreme as the great Tang scholar Han Yu, who wanted to abolish Buddhism. However, the Han Changli son of "hustle and repudiate the Buddha", argued strongly, not only failed to eliminate the Buddha, but also inadvertently increased the flames of Buddhism, and "repudiate" to the time of the Ming Wang Laozi, Buddhism is the same as the Confucian and Mencius, so that "The only way to contribute to the development of philosophical thought is to "integrate".

Regardless of the later Zhixu is not so think, seventeen years old, he read the predecessor of the Lotus pool 袾 Hong master's "Bamboo Window Essay", "Self-knowledge Record" and other works, not only to the Buddha is not "repudiation", but also write their own previous defamation of Buddha's text are burned; twenty years old, heard someone speak of the "Earth Store Sutra", but also to the Buddha! The first thing I did was to get a good understanding of how to use the Internet, and how to use the Internet in a way that would make it easier for people to understand how to use the Internet.

At the age of twenty-four, Zhixu listened to the "Lanyan Sutra", to which "the world is in the empty, empty of the great consciousness" is very confused, and then had the idea of formally become a monk. He heard of the great name of Beanshan Deqing master, and wanted to go to pay his respects, but Deqing was far away in Guangzhou, in the south, in the way of a long distance, according to Deqing's disciple Xue Ling monk.

After the monk, Zhixu came to Hangzhou Yunqi Temple. When listening to a master named Gude's lecture on the theory of consciousness, Zhi Xu felt that the content and the connotation of the Lama Sutra seems to have contradictions, so he went to ask Gude, but Gude said: "Sexuality and phase of the two sects, not allowed to be and will be (Zhi Xu, "eight do not Taoist biography", the same below)", it seems that in the eyes of the Gude master, the various sects of Buddhism is still distinctly separate from each other. It seems that in the eyes of this Guru, the sects of Buddhism are still distinctly separate. The first is that it is not a good idea to have the same kind of information, but it is a good idea to have the same kind of information in the same way. "

With this doubt and the question of "where does the body come from", Zhi Xu went to the Mount Kailash Temple to sit in meditation.

Almost a year of Zen practice, Zhi Xu woke up one day and suddenly felt refreshed, "realize that this body, from the beginning of time, when the birth of the current place, and everywhere extinguished, but the solid delusion of the shadow of the moment, moment by moment, the thought is not, not from the parents born". The human body appears to be the "reality", but it comes from "nothing" and goes to the "end", which is the shadow of the moment when viewed only from the mind. This thought and realization, with the Buddhist concept of mind only to solve the "phase" and "nature" of the contradiction, Zhi Xu from now on also reached the "sex and phase of the two sects, a common penetration" of the realm. At the same time, the idea of integrating the ideas of various sects into each other took root in the heart of Zhixu.

After that, Zhi Xu read the Buddhist scriptures, laws, and theories, and took the most difficult Bodhisattva precepts in his practice, and while promoting the law, he also practiced meditation and Buddhist chanting.

After seven years of comprehensive practice, at the age of thirty-two, Zhi Xu, who had the foundation of various sects, made four lots for himself, and wrote "Soto Xianshou", "Soto Tiantai", "Soto Ci'en", "Soto Ci'en", "Soto Ci'en", "Soto Ci'en", "Soto Ci'en", and "Soto Ci'en". He wrote "Sect Xianshou", "Sect Tiantai", "Sect Ci'en", and "Self-establishing Sect", and was going to choose one among several sects (even self-establishing sects) for his next breakthrough practice. At random, it was "Tiantai", and later he devoted himself to studying the teachings of Tiantai, but he also practiced Zen, Ritsu, and Pure Land schools.

After his middle age, Zhixu proposed that the practice should be "guided by prajna and returned to the Pure Land", and that "enlightenment should be the vanguard, and chanting Buddha's name should be the backbone (Zhixu's disciples compiled "Lingfeng Master Yi Zong Lun")", that is to say, to the Pure Land. Zhi Xu was able to unify Zen, teaching, and law, and he formed a unique set of ideas by integrating Zen, teaching, and law with the Nembutsu, and in his later years he settled at the Lingfeng Temple in Huzhou, so later generations summarized his doctrine as the "Lingfeng School". Because Zhixu's contribution to the Pure Land Sect was so great, he was revered as the ninth ancestor of the Pure Land Sect.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, there were many problems in the development of Buddhism, both in terms of ideology and practice, and Zhixu and his "Lingfeng School" were rare and thorough in recognizing the shortcomings at that time. Zhixu pointed out that:

The emphasis on the commentary of Buddhist scriptures to the neglect of the Dharma itself, the rules of procedure in the monastic community but the precepts of the study of the precepts of the decline, the prevalence of the "Guiyue Record" of the public case of the words of the book, but the gradual collapse of Zen, the Tiantai Four Teachings of the Rituals of the Tantai school of thought but the fundamental doctrine of the Tiantai school of thought is forgotten, these are all phenomena of the cart before the horse and they are really worthy of attention by the students of the Buddhadharma. The whole life of Zhixu was an effort to correct these undesirable developments with his own actions and discourses.

In his life, Zhixu left a large number of treatises covering various schools of Buddhism, and organized more than 1,700 Buddhist classics, which were divided into "Sutras", "Laws", "Treatises", "Miscellaneous Treatises", "Sutras", and "Miscellaneous Treatises". He also organized more than 1,700 Buddhist classics and divided them into four parts, namely, "Sutras", "Laws", "Treatises" and "Miscellaneous", and compiled them into the encyclopedic Buddhist book "Read the Collection of Knowledge", which had a great influence on the study of Buddhism in the later generations. In addition, Zhi Xu also wrote a fusion of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, "Zen interpretation of the Zhouyi four books", using the Buddhist Zen view of the mind to interpret the "Zhouyi" and "four books", which is undoubtedly the "integration of the three religions" is a work of mastery.

Master Zhixu gave himself the alias of "The Eight Noble Taoists", how "eight no"? He said in the preface to the biography of the Eight Noble Taoists:

Not confined to the nominal distinction between Confucianism, Zen, Law, (Tiantai), but from Confucianism to Buddhism, from Zen, Law to Tiantai and then to the Pure Land, the integration of the various schools of thought in one, Zhi Xu's experience and the philosophical writings of the "collection of the great," it can be said to be the "integration of" the work of the master. The "fusion" path has been carried out to the end.

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