Tag Archives: Daoyuan

Early Classical Formation

Tsung-mi’s early life is unique because it did not fit the mold of the typical Ch’an monk. Usually contact within the Buddhist monastic-community happened at an early age, between childhood and the early teen years. Tsung-mi came from an elite family and he began his early non-monastic education as a young child well-into his late teens fervently studying the Chinese Classics; this was a pivotal development because his early formation was firmly rooted in a “Classical vein” which helped to form his stature as a man of the fine-arts, a distinction that empowered his most erudite mode of expression. This was reinforced in his late teens and early twenties by fine-tuning this classical-exposure with a healthy dose of some Buddhist texts. read more