樂邦文類 3.123

3.123

Shi Daozhen rested his staff at Mount Lu during the Tianjian era of the Liang. Hearing that Master Yuan had in the past formed a society for the pure realm, he admired it deeply in his heart. However, regarding his own practice, his mind still hesitated. At a later time, he suddenly dreamt of several tens of people on the sea rowing a boat forward. Zhen asked them, and they replied: 'We are going to Amitābha's land.' Zhen said: 'May I follow you there?' They replied: 'With your intention, who would dare refuse you? Yet cultivating for a single day here yields merit surpassing eternal kalpas. The single Amitābha Sūtra exists, but you have not yet recited it, nor have you bathed the saṅgha; how can you seek to go?' Zhen awoke from the dream, sighing with regret and fearful shame, as if he had fallen short regarding the supreme Dharma. He thereupon devoted himself to that sutra and offered grand baths. One day two years later, in the empty hall with locked doors, someone arrived holding a silver dais and said: 'Your Lotus retribution has ended; you should ascend this dais.' He also said: 'With the Master's meritorious practice, you ought to have mounted a golden dais. How regrettable that your initial mind hesitated; therefore it is limited to this.' Zhen thanked him, saying: 'If I can indeed transcend the three realms and escape the five sufferings, then Zhen's foundation for seeing the Buddha will have begun; why must it be a golden dais?' Zhen was a man of few words; though he witnessed these events, he never boasted of them to others, but wrote them down himself and hid the record in a sutra chest. On the night of his death, across the myriad folds of cliffs and gorges of the mountain where he lived, it was as if thousands of blazing torches were shining against one another. The local villagers looked upon it in astonishment. At dawn, they went to the mountain to inquire, and only then learned of Zhen's death. What they had seen was the verification of his rebirth. On a later day, his record was retrieved from the sutra chest, and thus came to be transmitted to the world.