Zifu Rubao

Zifu Rubao was a Linji school master recorded in the transmission literature as a dharma heir who maintained the school's characteristic teaching methods. He is known from the lamp records for encounters that employed the direct, confrontational style that defined the Linji approach—the use of shout and blow, paradox and reversal, to shatter the student's reliance on conceptual understanding.

Rubao's presence in the lineage records testifies to the breadth of the Linji network during the Song dynasty. The tradition's survival depended not only on its great innovators but on the many faithful teachers who maintained its standards and transmitted its methods across the generations, ensuring that each new student had access to an authentic and living practice.