Shitou Xiqian

Shitou Xiqian was one of the two great heirs of Huineng's dharma-grandson lineage—through Qingyuan Xingsi—and the founder of one of the two main streams from which all surviving Chan/Zen schools descend. He was born in Guangdong and was so precocious that as a child he reportedly disrupted local sacrificial rituals by releasing the animals. He became a student of Huineng and then, after Huineng's death, studied with Qingyuan Xingsi. Shitou's approach to Chan was quiet, vast, and deeply grounded in the Huayan teaching of the interpenetration of all phenomena.

His most famous text, the Sandokai (Merging of Difference and Unity), is one of the foundational liturgical texts of the Soto school of Zen, chanted daily in temples around the world. The poem articulates the relationship between the absolute and the relative, between emptiness and form, with extraordinary poetic precision. Shitou built a meditation platform on a flat rock on Nanyue Mountain—the name Shitou means "stone head"—and taught from there for decades. From his lineage descended Dongshan Liangjie and the Caodong/Soto tradition.