Jingzhao Mihu

Jingzhao Mihu was a Caodong school master who taught in the Jingzhao region. He appears in the koan literature in an exchange about a rice cake: a monk asked what the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West was, and Mihu said, "A rice cake." This characteristically Caodong response points to the most ordinary, concrete thing imaginable as the answer to the most profound question.

Mihu's "rice cake" answer exemplifies the Caodong approach of finding the absolute within the relative, the sacred within the mundane. Where a Linji master might shout or strike, a Caodong master points to a rice cake—and in that pointing, the entire universe of awakened understanding is present for those with eyes to see.