Shiwu Qinggong

Shiwu Qinggong, known as Stonehouse, was a Yangqi line master of the Yuan dynasty who chose to live as a hermit on Xiawu Mountain rather than serve as abbot of a large monastery. He is celebrated as one of the great hermit-poets of the Chan tradition, producing over two hundred poems that describe the solitary life of mountain practice with great beauty and directness.

Shiwu's poems capture the simplicity and contentment of a practitioner who has found freedom in poverty and solitude: "I moved into a mountain hut, no neighbors around. A trail through the weeds leads to a winding stream." His choice to live outside the monastic system represents an important strand within the Chan tradition—the recognition that institutional life, however valuable, is not the only path, and that the mountain hermitage has its own form of authentic practice and transmission.