Vasasita

Vasasita, the twenty-fifth patriarch, received the transmission from Simha and continued the lineage after the period of persecution that had claimed his teacher's life. He is remembered as a teacher who emphasized the indestructibility of the true Dharma—that no external force can destroy what is not a thing, what is the ground of all things.

His transmission to Punyamitra continued the chain through difficult circumstances, and his role in the lineage embodies the resilience that the Chan tradition identifies as a quality of genuine realization: not invulnerability to circumstances, but the freedom that does not depend on circumstances.