Lù Xīxīng 陸西星 (1520 – 1606), zì Cháng-gēng 長庚, hào Qián-xū 潛虛, late-life Buddhist sobriquet Yùn-kōng jūshì 蘊空居士 (“Lay practitioner of skandha-and-emptiness”). Native of Xīng-huà 興化 (in Yáng-zhōu prefecture, modern Jiāngsū). The principal founder of the Eastern School (Dōng-pài 東派) of the internal-alchemy (nèi-dān 內丹) Daoist tradition; in late life turned to Buddhist study and produced two substantial Śūraṃgama-sūtra commentaries.
In youth Lù studied as a Confucian; later abandoned the examination-track for Daoist practice and is reported in his autobiographical writings to have received the inner-alchemy formula directly from Lǚ Dòngbīn 呂洞賓 in a vision. He is the author of an extensive corpus of Daoist works — including the Fānghú wàishǐ 方壺外史 (a major collection of his Daoist writings), the Nánhuá fùmò 南華副墨 (a celebrated commentary on the Zhuāngzǐ), the Dàoyuán huìlù 道緣匯錄, and the Bīnwēng zìjì 賓翁自記 — and is also commonly identified as the author (or one of the principal authors) of the late-Ming hagiographic novel Fēngshén yǎnyì 封神演義 (“Investiture of the Gods”), although the attribution is contested.
In late life he turned to Buddhist study under the Yùn-kōng jūshì sobriquet and produced two extant Śūraṃgama commentaries:
- Lèngyánjīng shuōyuē 楞嚴經說約 in 1 fascicle (KR6j0702, X14 no. 294) — a brief synoptic outline.
- Lèngyánjīng shùzhǐ 楞嚴經述旨 in 10 fascicles (KR6j0703, X14 no. 295) — the full sub-commentary.
Both works read the Lèngyán through a syncretic Confucian-Daoist-Buddhist (sānjiào 三教) lens, explicitly comparing the sūtra’s account of the Tathāgatagarbha with Confucian doctrines of xìng 性 and Daoist doctrines of the alchemical yuánshén 元神. The Fóguāng dàcídiǎn characterizes his approach as “explaining the Buddha’s principles by means of the Dao’s methods” (以道法解佛理).
Source: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001168; Fóguāng dàcídiǎn p. 4825; Wikipedia 陆西星 (zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E9%99%86%E8%A5%BF%E6%98%9F). For the Fēngshén yǎnyì attribution debate, see Liu Ts’un-yan, Buddhist and Taoist Influences on Chinese Novels (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1962).