Daoxin (道信, मार्गश्रद्धा - Mārgaśraddhā; ཏའོ་ཞིན། ta'o zhin Taoxin], universally revered across [[China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and East Asia as Dayi Chanshi - 大醫禪師, Chan Master of the Great Physician, and in Japan as Daii Dōshin), acclaimed throughout East Asian Buddhist history as the foremost disciple of Sengcan (d. 606) and the Fourth Patriarch of Chan (Seon / Zen) Buddhism, stands as the pivotal 6th century and 7th century monastic pioneer who transformed Chan from a small lineage of solitary wandering ascetics into a settled, self-sustaining monastic community. With his year of birth in 580 and his year of death in 651, Daoxin was born into the Sima family in Yongning (modern Guangji / Wuxue) in Hubei province, China, originally rooted in Henei (Henan). Displaying extraordinary spiritual maturity, contemplative stillness, and acute awareness of anicca and dukkha from early childhood—fond of sitting quietly in cross-legged posture as if already an accomplished contemplative—young Daoxin practiced fearless renunciation at age seven, took formal refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, entered the monastic order under an austere Vinaya teacher, and received full monastic ordination in the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya Pitaka lineage while upholding strict monastic precepts and ethical conduct.
Around 592, at the age of fourteen, Daoxin journeyed to Mount Wan (Mount Sikong) in Anhui province to seek out the Third Patriarch Sengcan, bowing deeply and pleading for the Dharma gate of liberation. When Sengcan asked who was binding him, Daoxin replied that no one bound him at all; Sengcan immediately asked why he was seeking liberation if no one bound him, triggering an instantaneous, thunderous breakthrough of non-dual awakening in Daoxin's mind-stream. Serving Sengcan faithfully as his personal attendant for nine years while deepening his single-pointed meditation, mindfulness, and concentration, Daoxin received from Sengcan the patriarchal robe and begging bowl, the direct mind-to-mind transmission of Chan, and the four-fascicle Gunabhadra translation of the Lankavatara Sutra (लङ्कावतारसूत्र - Laṅkāvatārasūtra, Taisho Number 670 in the Chinese Tripitaka and Toh Number 107 in the Tibetan Tripitaka).
Following Sengcan's parinirvana in 606, Daoxin traveled to Dalin Monastery on Mount Lu in Jiangxi province, where he practiced and taught for ten years before moving around 624 to Shuangfeng Mountain (Twin Peaks Mountain, also known as West Mountain) in Huangmei (Hubei province), where he founded Zhengjue Monastery (Four Ancestors Monastery). At Shuangfeng Mountain, Daoxin initiated a historic institutional revolution in Chinese Chan: rather than wandering without fixed abode or relying solely on lay alms, he established a permanent, self-reliant agricultural monastic community of over five hundred monastics who integrated daily manual labor, sutra recitation, and continuous seated meditation—earning his tradition the celebrated title of the East Mountain Teaching (Dongshan Famen, 東山法門).
So widespread grew Daoxin's renown for spiritual radiance and compassionate wisdom that Emperor Taizong of Tang dispatched imperial envoys three times summoning Daoxin to the imperial capital of Chang'an; three times Daoxin declined politely on grounds of old age and illness, and when the infuriated emperor ordered the fourth envoy to bring back either the living master or his severed head, Daoxin calmly stretched out his neck before the envoy's drawn sword without flinching, moving Emperor Taizong of Tang to awe and prompting the emperor to bestow gifts of rare silk and honor Daoxin's mountain sanctuary.
Literarily, Daoxin's profound contemplative instructions were preserved in the Chinese Tripitaka in the Rudao Anxin Yao Fangbian Famen (入道安心要方便法門, Essential Expedient Means for Entering the Path and Pacifying the Mind, recorded in Jingjue's Lengqie Shizi Ji, Taisho Number 2837), as well as in early Chan chronicles such as Daoxuan's Xu Gaoseng Zhuan (Taisho Number 2060) and the Jingde Chuandeng Lu (Taisho Number 2076). Synthesizing the direct mind-pointing of Bodhidharma with the Wenshu Shuo Bore Jing (Saptashatika Prajnaparamita Sutra, Taisho Number 232 and Toh Number 24 in the Tibetan Tripitaka), Daoxin introduced the celebrated practice of “Single-Practice Samadhi” (Yixing Sanmei, 一行三昧), instructing practitioners to guard the unified, luminous essence of mind (Shouyi, 守一) continuously throughout walking, standing, sitting, and lying down.
Philosophically and contemplatively, Daoxin harmonized the Lankavatara Sutra's teachings on innate Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha) and storehouse consciousness (alayavijnana) with Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka dialectics regarding emptiness (शून्यता - śūnyatā; སྟོང་པ་ཉིད། stong pa nyid Tongpanyid) and dependent origination, Asanga's Yogacara phenomenology, and Maitreya's Uttaratantra Shastra (Toh Number 4024 and Taisho Number 1611). Demonstrating that clinging to the five aggregates, anatta, emptiness of self, karma, and rebirth across samsara and nirvana dissolves naturally when the mind rests without grasping in its own primordially pure awareness, Daoxin bridged early Tiantai contemplative methods with classic Chan immediacy.
Throughout his three decades of teaching at Shuangfeng Mountain, Daoxin trained dozens of accomplished Dharma heirs—most notably the Fifth Patriarch Hongren (601–674), whom he met as a seven-year-old boy on a road in Huangmei, and Niutou Farong (594–657), founder of the Niutou (Oxhead) school of Chan—while anchoring monastic life in Shakyamuni Buddha's foundational teachings on the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, generosity, merit, loving-kindness, compassion, equanimity, right view, non-attachment, skillful means, and universal bodhicitta to uproot the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion across the six realms.
Passing into final parinirvana at Shuangfeng Mountain in 651 at the age of seventy-one seated upright in the lotus posture after instructing his disciples to build a stupa and entrusting the patriarchal lineage to Hongren—with his stupa doors reportedly opening spontaneously one year later to reveal his incorruptible seated body—Daoxin was posthumously honored by Emperor Daizong of Tang with the imperial title Dayi Chanshi (Chan Master of the Great Physician). Carried forward through Hongren and Huineng across China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, Daoxin stands forever alongside Bodhidharma, Dazu Huike, Sengcan, Nagarjuna, and Longchenpa as a supreme guardian of the Middle Way.