Traditional biographies record that he was the abbot of Tongan Monastery on Mount Fengchi near modern Nanchang.

[1] The earliest source of information on monks of this era is the Zutang ji (Patriarch's Hall Record), which was completed in 952, but it fails to mention Tongan Daopi as a disciple of his supposed teacher Yunju Daoying.

The Transmission of the Lamp instead claims that Tongan Guanzhi is the disciple of a Tongan Wei, in turn a student of Jufeng Puman, with Jufeng being an apparently obscure student of the famous Dongshan Liangjie.

Both Tongan Wei and Jufeng Puman are listed for the first time in the Transmission of the Lamp, and neither with much information.

Dayang was close with Wang Shu, one of the compilers of Transmission of the Lamp, suggesting that it is unlikely that an error would have been made therein about his lineage.