Foundling raised at Guoqing Temple on Mount Tiantai and named for being picked up, friend of the poet Hanshan, whose own plain-spoken verses circulate appended to Hanshan's collection
Mural guide
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.
Nothing certain is known of Shide's family, home or dates; his story comes from a preface to Hanshan's poems attributed to the official Luqiu Yin and from the Song-dynasty Biographies of Monks (Song gaoseng zhuan). According to these, the monk Fenggan of Guoqing Temple on Mount Tiantai found a crying child beside the road to Chicheng and brought him back to raise, naming him Shide, picked up. Grown, he worked in the temple dining hall and saved the monks' leftovers in a bamboo tube for Hanshan, who came to visit. The preface has Fenggan declare Hanshan an incarnation of Manjusri and Shide of Samantabhadra, though the monks took the pair for madmen. Shide's plain, admonitory poems circulate appended to Hanshan's collection and fill one chapter of the Complete Tang Poems. Popular religion later paired the two as the Hehe twins of harmony, and Chan painters show Shide holding a broom.
Freedom from Anger Is the PreceptTangShide's verse teaching that freedom from anger is the true precept and a pure mind the true vow
Records
Kept the dining hall at Guoqing Temple; his verses joined the Hanshan collection
Tang dynasty
According to the Song Biographies of Eminent Monks, Chan master Fenggan, walking by the Chicheng road, heard a child crying and found him, then took him to Guoqing Temple and handed him to the monk in charge of meals. The monk Lingyi later took him in and had him look after the dining hall, lamps and incense, and he gathered the scraps left by the monks. Daoqiao copied Hanshan's lines on the wall of the temple's earth-god shrine, saw Shide's verses, and attached them to the Hanshan collection.
Tang
Literature · Poetry