However, the Lamp records claim that after giving Sengcan Dharma transmission, Huike warned Sengcan to live in the mountains and “Wait for the time when you can transmit the Dharma to someone else.”[7] as a prediction made to Bodhidharma (Huike's teacher) by Prajnadhara, the twenty-seventh Chan ancestor in India, foretold of a coming calamity.

Subsequently, Sengcan spent two years at Mount Luofu (Lo-fu shan, northeast of Kung-tung (Canton)) before returning to Wangong Mountain.

Sengcan received the honorary title Jianzhi 鑑智 (“Mirror Wisdom”) [g] from the Tang dynasty emperor Xuan Zong.

Sengcan, like Bodhidharma and Huike before him, was reputed to be a devotee and specialist in the study of the Lankavatara Sutra, which taught the elimination of all duality and the “forgetting of words and thoughts”,[10] stressing the contemplation of wisdom.

[15] It was not until the Records of the Transmission of the Dharma-treasure (Sh’uan fa-pao chi), compiled about 710 and drawing on the stories in the Further Biographies of Eminent Monks, that a teaching “lineage” for Chan was created.

Most of what is known about his life comes from the Wudeng Huiyuan (Compendium of Five Lamps), compiled in the early 13th century by the monk Puji at Lingyin Temple[17] in Hangzhou.