Much like Vimalakīrti, Layman Pang is considered to exemplify the potential for non-monastic Buddhist followers to live an exemplary life and to be fully awakened.
Originally from Hengyang in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, Pang was a successful merchant with a wife, son, and daughter.
Pang's daughter Ling Zhao was particularly adept, and at one point even seems to have been more advanced and wise than her father, as the following story illustrates: The Layman was sitting in his thatched cottage one day [studying the sūtras].
"[1]After Pang had retired from his profession, he is said to have begun to worry about the spiritual dangers of his material wealth, and so he placed all of his possessions in a boat which he then sunk in a river.
Following this, the family began to lead an itinerant lifestyle, travelling around China and visiting various Buddhist masters while earning a living by making and selling bamboo utensils.
[3]Pang eventually moved on from Nanyue to Jiangxi province, and his next teacher was the second preeminent Chan master of the time, Mǎzǔ Dàoyī (馬祖道一).
For this occasion—generally considered among the most important events in a Buddhist practitioner's spiritual life—Pang composed a poem: [People of] the ten directions are the same one assembly— Each and every one learns wu wei.