Lin Zhao'en林兆恩

Style & Daoist names

Courtesy name Maoxun, Sobriquet Longjiang, Daoist name Ziguzi, Master of the Three Teachings, Lord of the Sanyi (Three-in-One) Teaching

Period

Ming

Dates

1517 — 1598

School

Sanyi (Three-in-One) Teaching

Role

Founder of the Sanyi (Three-in-One) TeachingThinkerLay Practitioner

Birthplace

Putian, Fujian

Life

Lin Zhao'en, courtesy name Maoxun, styled Longjiang, was a native of Putian, Fujian, and the founder of the Sanyi (Three-in-One) Teaching, also known as the Xia Teaching or the Sanyi Sect. Born into an official family, he repeatedly failed the civil examinations between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight, and thereupon abandoned the pursuit of an official career to devote himself entirely to the study of body and mind, visiting teachers of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism alike; after the age of thirty he began to advocate the ‘unity of the Three Teachings,’ and from the thirtieth year of the Jiajing era (1551) formally took disciples and lectured. His teaching held Confucianism as the foundation, Daoism as the gateway, and Buddhism as the ultimate goal, maintaining that ‘Daoism and Buddhism return to Confucianism, and Confucianism returns to Confucius,’ and holding that the Three Teachings were fundamentally identical in their understanding of mind and nature. In practice he created the ‘Nine-Stage Method of the Mind’ (popularly called the Genbei Xinfa, or Mind Method of Stilling the Back), based on the phrase ‘stilling one's back’ from the Yijing, proceeding through nine stages from regulating the body and stilling thought to gradually perceiving one's true nature, with an accompanying therapeutic effect through guided exercise. During the Jiajing era, when Japanese pirates invaded Putian, he led his disciples in collecting and burying corpses and distributing medicine to combat epidemics, greatly increasing his reputation, and his followers came to number in the tens of thousands. His writings were compiled by his disciples into the Linzi sanjiao zhengzong tonglun (Complete Works of Master Lin). After his death, Lin Zhao'en was deified by his disciples as the ‘Lord of the Three-in-One Teaching’ and the ‘Great Master of Salvation of the Orthodox Transmission of the Unified Three Teachings of Xiawu,’ and shrines to the Three Teachings dedicated to him were established in many places; his religious community has continued in central and southern Fujian to this day, and spread with emigrants to Taiwan and Southeast Asia, making him a representative figure of popular religion and the current of syncretic ‘unity of the Three Teachings’ thought in the Ming dynasty.

Contributions & Influence

• Founded the Sanyi (Three-in-One) Teaching, the most organizationally developed expression of the Ming-dynasty movement to unify the Three Teachings
• Created the Nine-Stage Method of the Mind, integrating quiet sitting, guided exercise and mind-nature cultivation
• Organized the collection of corpses and distribution of medicine during the pirate raids, laying the social foundation of his religious community
• Compiled his writings into the Linzi sanjiao zhengzong tonglun, forming a complete body of doctrine

Works

• Linzi sanjiao zhengzong tonglun (Complete Works of Master Lin)
• Excerpted Sayings on the Nine Stages
• Xia Discourses (compiler)

Legends

His disciples claimed that he could cure epidemic disease and enlighten the masses through the method of ‘stilling the back’; after his death he was venerated as the ‘Great Master of Salvation through the Three Teachings’ and deified — this belongs to the belief of his religious community.