Zhi Dun (AD 314–66)

Buddhist monk and specialist on the Zhuangzi, Zhi Dun was active in the xuanxue or ‘learning of the mysterious’ salons of the Eastern Jin regime in southeastern China. For him, the sage described by the Zhuangzi and Buddhist texts alike was a great man who knows the ways of heaven triumphantly and responds to beings in perfect freedom. Zhi Dun was also known for his interpretation of emptiness and his expansion of the concept of li (‘order’ or ‘pattern’) into an underlying metaphysical principle.