In terms of the content, The Reply to Yi Chuan quoted by the Zong Ben in the Ming Dynasty and the first letter to Yi Chuan included in The Collection of Ling Yuan Letters are the same letter. Although Zhu Zi had pointed out as early as the Southern Song Dynasty that the so-called The Reply to Yi Chuan was not written for Yi Chuan, some scholars still hold different views. Combined with the collection of letters from Ling Yuan, The Biography of Buddhist Monks in Chan Lin, Jiatai Pudeng Lu, The Analects of Zhu Zi and The Quotations of Yi Chuan, we can see that the letters couldn’t be written for Yi Chuan. From the ideological content, Yi Chuan’s thought did not come from Ling Yuan.
