六祖大師法寶壇經 1.157

1.157

After the Master spoke the verse, he sat upright until the third watch, when he suddenly said to his disciples, "I am going!" and quietly passed away. At that time an extraordinary fragrance filled the room, a white rainbow touched the ground, the forest trees turned white, and birds and beasts cried out in grief. In the eleventh month, the officials of the three commanderies of Guang, Shao, and Xin, together with disciples, monastics, and laypeople, vied to welcome his true body, unable to decide where it should go. Thereupon they burned incense and prayed: "Wherever the incense smoke points, there shall the Master return." At that moment, the incense smoke went straight to Caoxi. On the thirteenth day of the eleventh month, they relocated his funerary shrine along with the transmitted robe and bowl, and returned. In the seventh month of the following year, the shrine was opened; the disciple Fangbian covered [the body] with fragrant clay. The disciples, remembering the prediction about taking his head, protected the Master's neck with iron plates and lacquered cloth before placing him in the pagoda. Suddenly a white light appeared within the pagoda, shooting straight up into the sky, and only dispersed after three days. Shaozhou reported this to the throne, and an imperial decree was received to erect a stele recording the Master's practice of the Way.