樂邦遺稿 2.55

2.55

The Longshu Pure Land Writings says: "There was Chan Master Zhenru Zhe, an elder renowned for his practice. He resided in the great monasteries of the capital and sat in meditation without sleeping for forty years. After he passed into extinction, even his paper jacket produced relics (śarīra). Palace eunuchs cherished them and bought them for thirty strings of cash. Had this Chan Master cultivated for the West, he would surely have become an irreversible bodhisattva. Yet he never cultivated this, and after death he was born into a family of great wealth and nobility, spending his life in anxiety and suffering. How lamentable! Yongjia said: 'When enlightened, karmic obstacles are fundamentally empty; / when not enlightened, one must repay former debts.' Zhe did not resolve the great matter of birth and death, was born into a family of great wealth and nobility, fulfilled his past vow, and yet had much anxiety and suffering; he was repaying the former debts of hundreds of lifetimes and thousands of generations."