萬松老人評唱天童覺和尚頌古從容庵錄 1.89

1.89

The Master said: The Twenty-seventh Patriarch was originally named the Necklace Youth. Because the Twenty-sixth Patriarch, Puṇyamitra, was sharing a chariot with King Firm of East India, he asked the youth, 'Can you recall past events?' He replied, 'I remember in a past kalpa dwelling together with the Master; the Master expounded the Mahāprajñā, and I upheld the profound sūtras. Because of taking turns in right teaching, I waited for the Master here.' The Patriarch told the king, 'This is no small holy one; he is a responsive body of Mahāsthāmaprāpta.' The king ordered him to mount the chariot and come to the palace for offerings, even to the point of shaving his head. The Patriarch took the matter of the prajñā and sūtras and named him Prajñātāra. The Liang dynasty regarded Bodhidharma as Avalokiteśvara; the Western regions regarded the Patriarch as Mahāsthāmaprāpta. Only Amitābha Buddha has had no whereabouts down to the present. After a long pause he said: Fenggan's loose tongue! Later, on the occasion of an imperial banquet, the Venerable was the guest of honor. This old fellow showed strange behavior to delude the multitude; at that time he should have been knocked down, cutting off the entangling vines. Waiting right until the question 'Why does the Venerable not read the scriptures?'—indeed he could not let it pass. This old fellow also had no features of a great man; overturning the gourd and the ladle in one go, the king then made prostrations. What did he know of pain or itch? Wansong says: The king coveted his single grain of rice; the Venerable lost his ten thousand years of provisions. Only knowing the iron spine props up heaven, he did not realize his forehead was on the ground. If you want to lift him up, none other than Tiantong [can do so]. The verse says: