Kumu Daocheng

Kumu Facheng (枯木法成, fl. early 12th c.), the "Dead-Tree Master," was a Song-period Caodong-line teacher in the Furong Daokai stream whose nickname captured the *mòzhào* / silent-illumination style that the Caodong revival was systematising in his generation^[1]. The "withered-tree" image — sitting with the apparent stillness of a dead trunk while remaining wakeful — descends from the *kūmù-tang* (枯木堂, "dead-tree hall") tradition established at Shishuang Qingzhu's late-Tang community and forwarded through the Caodong line^[2].

The Kumu circle and the wider *mòzhào* revival became the focal point of Dahui Zonggao's polemic in the 1130s and 1140s, in which Dahui charged that "withered-tree" practitioners had confused the cessation of thinking with awakening; modern scholarship treats Dahui's account as one polemical reading rather than an accurate description of how the Kumu line itself understood the practice^[3].