六祖大師法寶壇經 1.166

1.166

The waist-weight stone used by the Master was carved with the eight characters: "First Year of Longshuo, Inscription of Layman Lu." This stone is preserved today at Dongchan in Huangmei. Furthermore, the Right Vice Director Wang Wei of the Tang dynasty wrote in his *Record of the Ancestral Master* for Great Master Shenhui: "The Master mingled with laborers for sixteen years; meeting Yinzong preaching the sūtras, his hair was accordingly shaved." Furthermore, Prefect Liu Zongyuan wrote in the stele for the posthumous title of the Ancestral Master: "The Master received the token of faith and lived in concealment on the South Sea for sixteen years. Judging that his [teachings] could be practiced, he then dwelt at Caoxi to be a teacher of humans." Furthermore, Grand Councilor Zhang Shangying wrote in the *Record of the Fifth Patriarch*: "The Fifth Patriarch taught and converted at the Dongchan Cloister in Huangmei County, as it was convenient for caring for his mother. In the first year of Longshuo, having transmitted the robe and Dharma to the Sixth Patriarch, he dispersed the assembly and entered the East Mountain to build a hermitage. A resident named Feng Mao donated the mountain to the master as a bodhimanda." Examining it on this basis, the Master's arrival at Huangmei to receive the robe and Dharma from the Fifth Patriarch was indeed in the xinhai year, the first year of Longshuo. Up to the bingzi year of Yifeng was sixteen years, at which point the Master arrived at Faxing to have his hair shaved. Other editions that record the Master arriving at Huangmei during the Xianheng reign era are probably mistaken.