Tao-hsin (580-651)

A Chinese Ch'an monk traditionally regarded as the fourth patriarch of the school. He left home at an early age and studied with Ch'an's third patriarch Seng-ts'an (d. 606), attaining enlightenment and receiving his master's robe and bowl as a token of his transmission of the Dharma. In 617, he is reputed to have saved a town from siege, creating the illusion of soldiers along the ramparts by having all the town's inhabitants recite the word ‘prajñā-pāramitā’ (‘great insight’). He eventually settled on Shuangfeng (‘twin peak’) mountain in Huang-mei in modern Hupei province, where he gathered a community of practitioners, including the next patriarch Hung-jen (601-74), who continued the line that is traditionally considered the main trunk of the Ch'an lineage, although it should not be forgotten that one of his other disciples, Fa-jung (594-657) became the head of the Oxhead school. Tao-hsin is also supposed to have left behind a work called The Five Gates of Tao-hsin, extracts of which appear in other works. It seems to indicate that he received much exposure to and was influenced by T'ien-t'ai teachings, particularly in his use of the term ‘single-practice samādhi’ (Chinese, i-hsing san-mei) and his two-pronged practice of seated meditation and mindfulness in every sphere of activity. He also lived at a time when Ch'an was in an institutional transition from isolated monks or very small communities of itinerant practitioners to large settled communities; his own community on Shuangfeng mountain was said to number around 500. Thus, his spiritual attainments, energy and charisma, and organizational abilities all seem to have set the agenda for further developments in Ch'an history.

A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)