Undisputed Lineages

I've been intrigued for a while now how Zibo Zhenke, a famous master of the Ming era also known for distancing himself from affiliating with any Chan lineage, ended up in Xuyun's Linji line. But then it was just now something even stranger appeared to me. According to the official lineage Puming Deyong (or Miaoyong, whose legitimacy was denied by the immediate ancestor of the founder of the Japanese Obaku school; see in the below mentioned book's page 213), who is three generations before Zibo, was only 16 (or 17) years old when Zibo died in 1603. Strange, isn't it?

But it's really nothing compared to Xuyun's Weiyang lineage what is a clear case of remote succession (yaosi 遙嗣) as we can see here.

However, it all becomes ironic when we read from Ven. Shengyan,

What is important to highlight here is that among all the expressions of Chinese Buddhism, Chan is the only tradition with an uninterrupted lineage, and a formal institutional foundation.

Let's just say that these fun facts were an appetiser for Jiang Wu's "Enlightenment in Dispute: the reinvention of Chan Buddhism in seventeenth-century China". It is worth reading, at least the conclusions at the end of each chapter and part 4.

And one more informative work I found today is Dr. Jimmy Yu's "A Tentative Exploration into the Development of Master Sheng Yen’s Chan Teachings" (PDF)