Accounts of Sosan (Jianzhi Sengcan), the Third Patriarch of Chinese Zen, are sparse and often wrapped in later hagiography, yet a few stories have come to embody the spirit of his teaching. The most frequently cited is the encounter with his teacher, Huike. In this story, Sosan, afflicted with a serious skin disease often described as leprosy, approaches Huike seeking liberation from his suffering and purification from his sins or troubled mind. Huike asks him to bring forth this sinful or troubled mind so that it may be purified. After searching, Sosan replies that he cannot find such a mind. Huike then declares that his mind has already been put at rest or his sins already cleansed. This simple exchange is presented as a pivotal moment of awakening, expressing the Zen insight that the mind’s original nature is already pure and that the roots of suffering cannot be located as a solid, independent entity.

Traditional Zen lineage accounts go on to describe how Huike later entrusted Sosan with the Dharma and the robe of transmission, recognizing him as the Third Patriarch. Because of anti-Buddhist persecutions, Sosan is said to have lived a largely hidden life, dwelling in remote mountains and avoiding public prominence. This image of a somewhat “invisible” patriarch, safeguarding the teaching in seclusion, has often been read as a symbol of how the Dharma can be quietly preserved even in times of turmoil. Within this hidden life, another story tells of the meeting with Daoxin, the future Fourth Patriarch, who sought Sosan out in the mountains. Sosan is portrayed as recognizing Daoxin’s capacity and transmitting the Dharma to him, emphasizing a direct, person-to-person confirmation rather than elaborate institutional structures.

A further strand of tradition associates Sosan with the celebrated text *Xinxin Ming* (“Faith in Mind” or “Verses on the Faith-Mind”). Whether or not he actually composed it, the work has long been linked with his name and treated as a distilled expression of the teaching attributed to him. The poem’s famous line, “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences,” resonates with the themes already implicit in the leper story: non-discrimination, non-duality, and trust in the inherent completeness of mind. Taken together, these stories and associations do not offer a detailed biography so much as a set of contemplative images—of illness revealed as empty, of Dharma quietly maintained in the mountains, and of a “faith in mind” that rests on recognizing what has never been lacking.