Clerics › Religious Figure
Shenxiu
Tang Chan monk and leading disciple of Hongren whom Empress Wu brought to Luoyang, later regarded as the founder of the gradualist Northern School
In a temple courtyard at dusk, a great bronze bell hangs at the right and incense smoke rises from a bronze urn; monks in orange robes and plainly dressed visitors walk toward a lamplit hall, lotus flowers bloom in a stone basin, and a gold prayer wheel stands at the left.
Also known as Beizong Shenxiu
- Roles
- Religious Figure
Shenxiu, whose lay surname was Li, came from Weishi in Bianzhou, read widely in the classics and histories as a youth and became a monk at the end of the Sui. He later studied meditation under Hongren at the East Mountain monastery on Shuangfeng in Qizhou. After Hongren died in 674 he moved to Mount Dangyang in Jingzhou. Empress Wu summoned him to Luoyang, had him carried into the hall in a sedan chair, knelt to him herself and ordered the Dumen monastery founded at Dangyang in his honour; Emperor Zhongzong treated him with the same respect. He died in 706, received the title Chan Master Datong, and Zhang Yue was among those who wrote his memorial inscription. The Platform Sutra (Liuzu tanjing) says he offered Hongren a verse beginning with the body as the bodhi tree and was outdone by Huineng. After Huineng's disciple Shenhui attacked his line at the Huatai assembly in 732, Chan writers spoke of a sudden Southern school and a gradual Northern one.
Life and times
Dates c. 606 CE–706 CE