Shide (monk)

Shide (Chinese: 拾得; pinyin: Shídé; Wade–Giles: Shih-Te; lit.

9th century)[1] was a Tang dynasty Chinese Buddhist poet at the Guoqing Temple on Mount Tiantai on the East China Sea coast; roughly contemporary with Hanshan and Fenggan, but younger than both of them.

Shide lived as a lay monk, and worked most of his life in the kitchen of Guoqing Temple.

An apocryphal story relates how Shide received his name: Once, Fenggan was travelling between Guoqing Temple and the village of Tiantai, when at the redstone rock ridge called 'Red Wall' (赤城) he heard some crying.

He investigated, and found a ten-year-old boy who had been abandoned by his parents; and picked him up and took him back to the temple, where the monks subsequently raised him.