Shitou Xiqian
Shitou Xiqian was born in the year 700 in the north of modern Guangdong Province, not far from Cao Xi, where the Sixth Patriarch Huineng lived and taught, and where it is recorded that Shitou was present at his death in 713. In 728, Shitou was ordained as a monk in Lofu Shan, also in Guangdong. He then studied with Qingyuan Xingsi (660-740) at Chizhou in modern Jiangxi Province and received Dharma transmission from him, thus becoming a third generation master in the lineage descending from Huineng. In 742, Shitou moved to South Mountain in Hunan, which is called Hengshan or Nanyue in Chinese, where he probably remained until his death in 790.
Shitou had many students and disciples during the latter part of his career, and three of the Five Houses are descended from him, namely the Cao-Dong, Yunmen and Fayan schools. Shitou's great contemporary in Jiangxi was Mazu (709-788), regarded by historians as the most influential chan master of the 8th century, who also studied at South Mountain, under the master Nanyue Huaizhang (677-744). From Mazu the two remaining Five Houses originated: Linji [Rinzai] and Kuiyang [Igyo]. According to the Sung chronicles, Shitou and Mazu both knew and respected each other, sent students back and forth, and apparently also enjoyed teasing each other from time to time.
South Mountain has been known traditionally as one of the Five Holy Buddhist Mountains of China, the others being Wutai Shan in Shanxi, Putuo Shan in Zhejiang, Emei Shan in Sichuan, and Song Shan in Henan. According to one legend, Bodhidharma stopped at South Mountain for a visit on his way from India, and Shitou's South Peak Temple itself was reportedly founded in the late 6th or early 7th-century. In modern times, the temple was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt in 1981-82, with support from Soto Zenshu in Japan. In 1991, it housed a small sangha of about 80 monks and nuns, led by Ven. Shi Bao Tan, abbot of the temple. Visitors are welcome and are shown the large rock upon which Shitou constructed his meditation hut. See photo. It sits on a ledge about 30 meters long, has a flat surface, and directly overlooks the northeastern side of the temple. When Shitou arrived at South Mountain, he built himself a meditation hut on top of this rock, and thus became known as Shitou Heshang, the "Stone Monk."
South Mountain is actually the name given to several forested hills and valleys west of Nanyue township. The area has always been known more for its Taoist than Buddhist temples, also in Shitou's time, and the large Taoist temple called Da Miao today attracts most of the tourist attention. South Mountain was also the location of a Confucianist academy or university, one of the few such institutions in China. In Shitou's time, the area would have had only a small number of Buddhist and Taoist temples, and there may have been a few hundred monks and priests of both religions living and meditating in seclusion on the mountainsides. The environment must have provided some fairly intense philosophical discussions.
The Jian Xiang pagoda, erected as a memorial tower after Shitou's death, was in 1991 a pile of rubble, overgrown by bushes and thorns. It lies about half a kilometer down the side of the mountain from South Peak Temple, just inside a Chinese military reservation, used in recent decades as a missile base. Shitou's body was mummified in black lacquer. Much damaged by fire, it was brought to Japan during the time of the Chinese Revolution (1911), and it may be viewed today at the Soto zen temple of Soji-ji in Yokohama. (For further information concerning Shitou's remains, see Bernard Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Zen, pp. 167-168, with illustration.)
