EXP-017: Why He Began: The Teacher's Own Account of the Path
Why this record matters
This is the archive’s record of the series’ opening episode — the one where the teacher is asked who he is, and answers with an origin story, a timetable, a retreat record, and a refusal. The site keeps it for four reasons: it is the source episode for the whole series the archive draws on; the origin story (a doctor’s son, a hospital childhood, the fear of dying badly, a mantra tried on a sick body) is the tradition’s most human entrance — no enlightenment, just a boy who did not want to die the way the patients did; the schedule is the archive’s only full-time-table record of what a monastic sitting life actually looks like hour by hour; and the lineage refusal (“to name a school is to fall into discrimination”) is the boundary-behavior the source policy is built to respect — the site records the refusal, and does not resolve it.
The record (paraphrased, anonymized)
- The report: his own account of the path — mantra, Buddha-name samādhi, huatou — and of its beginning in a hospital corridor.
- The timetable: 3 a.m. rise, hours of prostrations (864 full-body on his own schedule), one to three hours of sitting around liturgies, no breakfast, evening liturgy to 9, sitting to midnight, sleep at 10 — and in mountain retreats, sixteen hours of sitting a day.
- The retreat record: one tomato and one carrot a day; at peak, twenty hours of sitting with one hour of pacing per five; no sleep after the first days; at least forty-nine days indoors.
- The refusal: no lineage, no face, no money; “a hundred-flower mixed boxing”; judge the boxing, not the boxer.
- The three layers, kept apart: the self-report, the traditional frame (the stages named in his own terms), and the alternative reading (self-report ≠ finding; the intensive schedule’s risks are documented on the site’s research and problem pages; the refusal is respected, not investigated). The same separation as every experience page in the archive.
Confidence note: one public Q&A episode, paraphrased and anonymized per the ingestion rules — medium confidence; the teacher’s identity, temple, and lineage are not named on this site; the extraordinary claims (twenty-hour sitting, sleeplessness, the broken huatou) are recorded as testimony and cross-linked to the site’s caution pages, not presented as benchmarks; the page cross-references EXP-013 (the same teacher’s boundary answers) and EXP-014 (the hard line on posture).
Interpretations
Practitioner: Questions in the readers' own framing: whether he has done closed retreats and what he practiced there; what he does outside sitting — reads sutras, sleeps, stays indoors; what lineage he belongs to, since he guides others; and a beginner's question about the daily timetable, asked to encourage diligence
Traditional: The teacher's account, in his own terms: he entered through recitation (the Great Compassion Mantra), cultivated the Buddha-name samādhi, then took up the huatou, and 'the huatou broke' — which he offers, without naming it, as the answer to questions about his attainment. His origin story: the son of a physician, playing in the hospital as a child, watching the dying and their families, resolving not to die that way; sickly, afraid of needles and medicine; then, happening on the mantra's claim that it cures illness, he tried it — and it 'really worked,' which began the practice. His regular day: rising at 3 a.m., prostrations from 3:30 to 5:30; work and a one-hour sit; no breakfast; sutra-lectures and Chan-hall sitting through the morning; midday prostrations; the noon meal moved by dharma-assemblies (the no-food-after-noon rule bent for lay donors); afternoon lectures and sitting; his own two hours of prostrations — 864 full-body prostrations — then kitchen fruit and water ('after exercise, without vitamins and water, the muscles take damage'); the 6 p.m. meal mostly declined; evening liturgy to 9, sometimes skipped for the Chan hall; posting online, then two or three more hours of sitting; sleep at 10. Mountain retreats at other temples: sixteen hours of sitting a day (2:30–6:30, 8–12, 1:30–5:30, 6–10), under four hours of sleep. His closed-retreat record: one tomato and one carrot a day, sitting most of the time; on the strongest days, twenty hours of sitting with one hour of pacing every five; no sleeping — at first sitting against the wall and sleeping propped there, then after a few days the body 'entered the state' and sleep was unnecessary; at least forty-nine days without leaving. On lineage: he will not name a school — 'to name a school is to fall into discrimination; the dharma is perfectly fused, there is only one vehicle'; he studied under Chan, learned here and there, fused it all, and forgot it — 'like this but not this, like that but not that... a hundred-flower mixed boxing'; judge him by whether the boxing keeps you fit and settles affliction, not by who he is; he takes no money and shows no face. On the 'mind-made body' question he refuses outright: such questions are testing him with theory, and he deletes challengers