Clerics › Religious Figure
Shi Puji
Southern Song Linji Chan monk and abbot of Lingyin Temple who compiled the Compendium of the Five Lamps.
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 Puji · Dachuan Puji · Hao Dachuan
Shi Puji, styled Dachuan, born Zhang in Fenghua, Mingzhou, was a Southern Song Chan monk of the Yangqi branch of the Linji school and successor of Zhewen Ruyan, serving as abbot of several great monasteries including Jingci and Lingyin. Around 1252 he directed the condensation of five earlier lamp records, including the Jingde Record, into the twenty-chapter Compendium of the Five Lamps, which became the most widely read Chan history. The phrase 'to spit blood at others', meaning to slander, appears in it.
Life and times
Dates 1179 CE–1253 CE