Zuoxi Mountain

Zuoxi Mountain

Zuoxi Mountain is a sacred mountain for meditation where the eighth patriarch Master Xuanlang of the Tiantai School in the Tang Dynasty—credited with making outstanding contributions to the school’s transformation from decline to flourishing—led his direct disciple, the ninth patriarch Master Jingxi, along with the founders of the Korean Tiantai School from the Silla Kingdom (now Korea), Masters Farong Liying and Chunying Liying. It earned its name due to its location on the left side of the Shuangxi Stream, a tributary of the Puyang River. The Tiantai School is often referred to as Eastern Buddhism, and both Tiantai Mountain and Zuoxi Mountain are revered as holy sites of Tiantai Buddhist learning. Master Xuanlang of Zuoxi was born in the fourth year of the Xianheng era of the Tang Dynasty (673) and passed away in the thirteenth year of the Tianbao era (754). According to the local chronicles of Pujiang: the master’s name was Xuanlang, also known as Huiming, a descendant of the sixth generation of the lay Buddhist Fu Xi from the Liang Dynasty during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, hailing from the Fu family of Yiwu. He became a monk at the age of nineteen, wandered the lands at twenty-one, and mastered various Buddhist scriptures. Later, he studied the Zhiguan method—the fundamental meditative practice of the Tiantai School—from the seventh patriarch, Master Huwei. Around the age of fifty, he established a hermitage on Zuoxi Mountain. At that time, Zuoxi Mountain was a wild, overgrown area haunted by beasts and bereft of any living conditions. In pursuit of profound enlightenment, he brought his disciple Jingxi here and spent over thirty years elucidating the abstruse philosophy of the *Zhiguan* (Stop-Contemplate) doctrines. Today, over twenty works expounding the Tiantai School, totaling hundreds of thousands of words, are displayed—they originated from Zuoxi’s lifelong practice and teachings, leading the Tiantai School out of decline and into flourishing, ushering in a brand-new golden age for Chinese Buddhist studies. The Yuan Dynasty scholar Liu Guan (1270–1342, from Pujiang) visited Zuoxi Mountain and left behind this verse: “What practice did Master Lang pursue, serene through day and night? When his *Zhiguan* was complete, bright moonlight pierced the gloom.” This means that Master Xuanlang’s completion of the *Zhiguan* teachings was like a beam of bright moonlight breaking through the darkness, illuminating all with clarity.