Bào Zōngzhào 鮑宗肇
Late-Míng lay Buddhist. Zì Xìngquán 性泉 (“Nature-Spring”); hào Tiāngǔ jūshì 天鼓居士 (“Heaven-Drum Layman”). Native of Shānyīn 山陰 (Shàoxīng, Zhèjiāng). Lifedates unrecorded; active during the Wànlì era, died in the community of Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 by zuò tuō 坐脫 (seated-meditation departure, traditionally held in Buddhist circles to signal Pure-Land rebirth), presumably between 1615 and 1635.
From a family of hereditary Buddhist faithful. At age 20 gave up meat and alcohol and established a daily practice of reciting one full Lotus Sūtra and one full Śūraṅgama Sūtra. Initially worked as a paper-seller in the Zuì-lǐ 檇李 (Jiāxīng) market — “merely a market-trader” (yī shì gǔ 一市賈) in Zhìxù’s phrase — before progressively deepening his Buddhist study.
Sought training successively under three of the major late-Míng Chán masters:
- Zǐ-bǎi Zhēn-kě 紫柏真可 (1543–1603), who commissioned him to produce fine-quality manuscript copies of the Śūraṅgama and Lotus sūtras for woodblock printing.
- Zhànrán Yuánchéng 湛然圓澄 (1561–1627), with whom he maintained extensive correspondence.
- Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 (1535–1615), in whose community he took his final refuge and died seated in meditation.
His one surviving work is the Tiān yuè míng kōng jí 天樂鳴空集 KR6q0185 in three juan, self-prefaced in 1610. The text circulated in manuscript for four decades among a chain of lay-Buddhist transmitters (Táo Shíliáng 陶石梁, Qián Yǒngmíng 錢永明, Wáng Zhǐān 王止菴) before being edited and doctrinally certified by Ǒuyì Zhìxù 蕅益智旭 in 1653 and published in the Jiāxīng Canon.