量處輕重儀 1.2

1.2

Determining the disposition of a deceased monastic's robes and personal property is exceedingly difficult, for the holy teachings are vast and the sectarian traditions diverge. Even past ancestral masters could not be free of hesitation; how much less could those of shallow learning and scant hearing fully comprehend it? For this reason, our venerable ancestor, Great Master Fahui of Nanshan, collected the grand purports of the various Vinayas, established a great model for a single school, and authored the Regulations for Distributing Light and Heavy Property to bequeath to later generations. Its text is resplendent like the light of the sun and moon, and in its determinations of light and heavy property, nothing is left unexhausted. Therefore, successive generations have prized it as a clear mirror. How wonderful that recently there has been Vinaya Master Jōshun of Jiuhou Peak, a great whale in the ocean of Vinaya; lamenting deeply that although the book survived, its transmission in the world was not widely spread, he collated and carved it into printing blocks to circulate it. This autumn, being together at the Radiant Mantra gathering at Saidai-ji in Nara, I suddenly came across the finished work. Raising it to my head in reverence and opening it with incense, I sighed and said: "Regarding this scripture, since it was first transmitted to our land by the former Vinaya Master Jianzhen roughly a thousand years ago, it has never been heard to have been printed. In our present time falling into the course of the final Dharma age, observing this single elevation of it, can it not be called a great fortune for our school?" Master Shun urged me to write a preface. Amidst my leaping joy I did not firmly decline, and straightway put forward humble words to express a bit of rejoicing. May those who take pleasure in studying the precepts circulate and transmit it widely, far reaching the Nāgapuṣpa [Assembly], all relying on this text to determine light and heavy property, together following the single path. So said the pure practitioner.