淨土論 3.11

3.11

僧衍法師者，并洲汶水人也。少而出家，勤心聽學，講《涅槃》、《攝論》、《十地》、《地持》四部經論，普皆精熟，春秋九十六。去貞觀十六年亡五六年間，專念阿彌陀佛。初迴心後，一日一夜禮彌陀佛，限五百拜，於後漸加。將終時，日夜千拜，念阿彌陀佛名，日夜七八萬遍，未曾懈墮。臨終之日告弟子曰：「阿彌陀佛來授我衣香。觀世音菩薩、大勢至菩薩等聖眾遍滿虛空。自此已西純是淨土。」於即壽終。法師已前全不存向，九十已上逢綽法師講《無量壽觀經》，聞已方始迴心。四五年間，臨終境界略如前說。

Dharma Master Sengyan was a native of Wenshui in Bingzhou. He went forth in his youth and listened and studied with diligent mind, lecturing on four scriptures and treatises: the Nirvāṇa, the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, the Daśabhūmika, and the Bodhisattvabhūmi, being thoroughly proficient in all of them. He lived to the age of ninety-six. For five or six years before his passing in the sixteenth year of Zhenguan, he focused exclusively on mindfulness of Amitābha Buddha. When he first turned his mind, in a single day and night he bowed to Amitābha Buddha with a quota of five hundred bows, gradually increasing them later on. Near his end, he bowed a thousand times day and night, and recited the name of Amitābha Buddha seventy to eighty thousand times day and night, never slacking. On the day of his death, he said to his disciples: 'Amitābha Buddha has come to bestow robes and incense upon me. The holy assemblies of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, Bodhisattva Mahāsthāmaprāpta, and others fill the empty sky. From here westward, it is purely the Pure Land.' Thereupon, his life ended. Previously, the Dharma Master had had no inclination toward this at all; only when he was over ninety did he encounter Master Daochuo lecturing on the Guan wuliangshou jing, and upon hearing it did he first turn his mind. During those four or five years, the visions near his death were roughly as recounted above.