Yunqi Zhuhong

Zhuhong was reportedly an excellent student, and passed the first level of the Imperial civil-service exams, and continued studying to the age of 32.

[2] His first encounter with Buddhism, especially the Pure Land tradition, reputedly began after he heard his neighbor intoning the nianfo.

[2] After series of personal misfortunes, starting with the death of his infant son, followed by his wife, other family losses, and failure to advance any further in the civil-service exams, Zhuhong took up the monastic life in 1566.

One story recounts how Zhuhong, after seeing a teacup fall and shatter, pondered the intransience of life, and decide then and there to become a monk.

[3] Zhuhong's polemic coincided with the political appointment of Shen Que (沈隺, d. 1624) as vice minister of rites in Nanking (Nanjing) and his initiation of an anti-Catholic campaign from official circles in 1616.

[1] In so doing, Zhuhong attempted to reconcile the more traditional "Western-direction" view of the Pure Land with the more "mind-only" position frequently espoused by Chan Buddhist institutions.

In additional to a strict, disciplined lifestyle, Zhuhong advocates the verbal form of the nianfo in particular due to the declining Age of the Dharma.

Mind, Buddha, and sentient beingsare all of one substance; the middle stream (non-duality) does not abide on the two banks (this world and the Pure Land).For example, the practice of reciting the nianfo works in either context, Zhuhong wrote, since a literal interpretation of reciting the nianfo would lead one to be reborn in the Pure Land, while in a mind-only context, reciting the nianfo would lead to a focused, "unperturbed mind".