Over the next two centuries, Chan identity crystalized around the teachings of nonduality and Buddha-nature. In the aftermath of a devastating purge of Buddhism from 841–845, during which more than a quarter million monks and nuns were forcibly returned to lay life and over 5,000 temples, monasteries and Buddhist libraries were destroyed, Linji Yixuan (d. 866), one of the most influential teachers in Chan history, took these teachings to their iconoclastic extreme, dismissing the great Buddhist scriptures as “hitching posts for donkeys” and encouraging anyone who happened to see “the Buddha” on the road to kill him. 