四明尊者教行錄 6.40

6.40

[Zhili] addresses you: Choosing an auspicious day and praying to the sage, I cleanse the inkstone, scent the brush, and write my thoughts, reporting upward to the Prefect and Academician. I humbly reflect that due to perfumed habits from past affinities, my nature delights in the Dharma gates expounded by Zhizhe of Tiantai; hence I investigated their meanings and lectured upon their texts, acting in accordance with understanding through cold and heat without interruption, enduring hardship and forgetting weariness for more than forty years now. For I know that in this teaching, the understanding is perfect and the practice sudden, and the contemplation of principle and ritual forms of phenomena unite as one, advancing toward the gate of liberation with assured certainty. Seeing the places where this school is transmitted, with lectures and training gathering students, I united efforts to raise funds and built this cloister, just barely bringing it to completion, so that it may forever be an abbotship of the ten directions to transmit and propagate the Tiantai Dharma. Although this matter has been accomplished, we still lack a vegetable garden. My secular father, Master Jing, has transmitted and handed over to this household several hundred zhang of land to be used by the sangha's permanent property for cultivation, supplying the monks day by day and avoiding seeking elsewhere; it is truly not out of insatiability. I worry that ignorant persons in the future may suddenly bring lawsuits and cause changes. I respectfully beg the Academician, who with a penetrating mind serves as a patron of Chan and the doctrinal teachings, knowing that propagation faces many hardships, to grant permission to report this to the heavenly court and transmit it to the Prime Minister's Office. This is not receiving donations from others, nor is it buying and acquiring fields and gardens, but rather what a secular father bestowed upon his son, not violating the statutory regulations. I beg for an imperial decree to be issued so that this garden land may forever belong to the saṅghārāma. I, [Zhili], bowing to the images and upholding the scriptures, have prayed in heart and voiced in words, specifically concerning this garden matter for many years. Now indeed, as the Academician inspects in spring and graciously deigns to bestow extraordinary regard, I firmly anticipate that on this occasion my vow may be fulfilled. I earnestly hope that your dais-like compassion will keep in mind my bitter practice and self-forgetfulness for the sake of the Dharma, and specially exert great power to bring about this supreme karmic condition. If I can fulfill my heart's desire for a single day, I shall have no anxieties even through ten thousand deaths. The writing does not form proper characters, and the words do not make elegant prose; I sincerely record my earnest dedication without avoiding crude clumsiness, and in encroaching upon your august dignity, I am overwhelmed with fear and trepidation. [Zhili] respectfully addresses you. The fifteenth day of the eighth month in the third year of the Tiansheng era (1025 CE).