Dingzhou Shizang

Dingzhou Shizang was a student of Nanquan Puyuan known for his forthright and uncompromising character. He features in several important encounters in the lamp records. When Nanquan told the assembly that he would sell his water buffalo the next day, Shizang stepped forward and said, "I want to buy it." Nanquan asked, "What will you give?" Shizang walked forward three steps, bowed, and left. This exchange exemplifies the Chan approach of answering through action rather than conceptual explanation.

Shizang continued Nanquan's teaching style of drawing on the concrete and immediate to point beyond the conceptual. His recorded exchanges, though few, show a teacher who inherited Nanquan's characteristic blend of ordinariness and transcendence—a teaching in which the most mundane activities become the ground of awakening.