Tiānyǐn Yuánxiū 天隱圓修 (1575–1635), also Qìngshān Yuánxiū 磬山圓修, was a pivotal late-Míng Línjì (Yángqí-branch) Chán master of the Lóngchí 龍池 lineage and founder of the Qìngshān 磬山 sub-branch. Native of Jīngxī 荊溪 (= Yíxīng 宜興, Chángzhōu), lay surname Mǐn 閔; he lost his father early and was raised in poverty by his widowed mother Pānshì 潘氏. According to his own autobiographical xíngyóu 行由 (recorded Chóngzhēn 4 = 1631 at Qìngshān, preserved as the closing text of juan 15 of the present yǔlù), an abiding concern with impermanence was crystallised at age twenty on hearing a temple lecture on the Shǒuléngyán jīng 首楞嚴經 passage that “all sentient beings, failing to recognise the ever-abiding, true mind and its pure luminous nature, use delusive thoughts…”, whence he sought out Lóngchí Huànyǒu Zhèngchuán 龍池幻有正傳 (1549–1614) at Lóngchí shān, tonsured Wànlì 26 wùxū (1598), aged 24. He practised on Zhàozhōu’s wú 無 huàtóu, then on fùmǔ wèi shēng 父母未生, and had a major opening in 1604 on hearing a donkey bray during a two-year closed-retreat contemplation of the Qiánfēng / Yúnmén fan-jū-zi 扇子話 case (yī lù nièpán mén, wèishěn lùtóu zài shén-me chù); further sealed in Jīntái (Beijing) by Huànyǒu that same year. He served on the staff of the Wànlì grand imperial patrons (including assisting at an 1605 wúzhēhuì at Wǔtáishān hosted by the Empress-Dowager and presided over by Jìngyuān 靜淵), took the xītáng 西堂 seat at Lóngchí in 1608 at Huànyǒu’s insistence, and after his master’s death in 1614 withdrew to found his own cloister at Qìngshān (Yíxīng) in Wànlì 48 gēngshēn (1620), clearing the mountain’s deep valley himself and surviving the winter of 1620/21 through fifty days of snowfall and near-starvation. Qìngshān subsequently grew into a major Chán centre. In his last decade he also took the abbacy of the Shàngbóshān Bàoēn Chányuàn 上柏山報恩禪院 in Húzhōu (entered 1634.9.13) and the Wūzhānshān Fǎjì Chányuàn 烏瞻山法濟禪院. He died on Chóngzhēn 8.9.23 (2 November 1635), aged 61 (37 dharma-years). Among his principal dharma-heirs — the founders of the four lines of the Qìngshān branch of Línjì Chán — were Línggāo Tōngyù 林臯通豫, Ruò’ān Tōngwèn 通問 箬庵通問 (1604–1655), Yùlín Tōngxiù 玉林通琇 (1614–1675; preceptor to the Shùnzhì emperor), and Shāncí Tōngjì 山茨通際. His principal surviving work is the present fifteen-juan Tiānyǐn héshàng yǔlù 天隱和尚語錄 (KR6q0397), edited by Tōngwèn in 1638–39; a separately-cut Lín huòwèn 林或問 is noted in the yǔlù mùlù as circulating independently. Together with his dharma-brother Mìyún Yuánwù 密雲圓悟 (1566–1642) under Huànyǒu, Yuánxiū is one of the two principal conduits through which the early-17th-century revival of Línjì Chán reached the late Míng and Qīng eras.