Zhaozhou Congshen (趙州從諗) (778?-897?), known as Chao-chou Ts'ung-shen in Wade-Giles and Jōshū Jūshin in Japanese, was one of the renowned Chan (Zen) masters of ancient China. Events Charlemagne fights the Moors in Spain. ... Events January - the Cadaver Synod July/August- Pope Stephen VII dies and is succeeded by Pope Romanus. ... Wade-Giles, sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization (phonetic notation and transliteration) system for the Chinese language based on Mandarin. ... Chán is a major school of Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism. ... Bodhidharma, woodblock print by Yoshitoshi, 1887. ...

Zhaozhou took his monastic name from the name of the small town near Beijing where he lived. He is said to have been born in 778 and to have died in 897, giving him an alleged life span of 119 years. According to the same sources, he only entered monastery life at the ripe age of 61 (or 80), but under the tutelage of Nanquan (Nansen) he learned rapidly and eventually became abbot, a position he held for 40 years. He was known for his asceticism but also his kindness, favouring verbal debate to striking his students. ▶(?) (Chinese: 北京; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Pei-ching; Postal System Pinyin: Peking) is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). ... Events Charlemagne fights the Moors in Spain. ... Events January - the Cadaver Synod July/August- Pope Stephen VII dies and is succeeded by Pope Romanus. ... A monastery is the habitation of monks, derived from the Greek word for a hermits cell. ... Nánquán (Chinese: 南拳; literally southern fist) refers to those Chinese martial arts that originate south of the Yangtze River, including Hung Kuen, Choy Lee Fut, and Wing Chun. ... Asceticism denotes a life which is characterised by refraining from worldly pleasures (austerity). ...

Even during his lifetime his fame grew rapidly: five of the 48 koans in The Gateless Gate are attributed to Zhaozhou, as well as twelve of the 100 in the Blue Cliff Record. Probably the best known of these is Zhaozhou's Dog, in which a monk asks the question: "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?" Zhaozhou then shouted "wú!" (無; transliterated into Japanese as "mu") This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The Gateless Gate (無門關, Zh. ... The Blue Cliff Record (Chinese: 《碧巖錄》 Bìyán Lù; Japanese: Hekiganroku) is a collection of Zen Buddhist koans originally compiled in China during the Song dynasty in 1125 (宋宣和七年) and then expanded into its present form by the Chan master Yuanwu Keqin (圜悟克勤 1063-1135). ... Traditional Han character (used in Japanese) for mu Simplified Han character (used in modern Chinese) for wú Mu (Japanese), Wú/Mou5 (Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese); ç„¡, simplified: æ— , Cantonese: 冇) is a word which can be roughly translated as without or have not. While typically used as a prefix to imply the absence of...

His style was known as "lips-and-tongue Zen" for its ability to make pithy responses with many layers of meaning.