緇門警訓 1.49

1.49

Remember all good words, chanting and reciting them. Kāśyapa and Ānanda fully maintained the eighty thousand Dharma treasuries. In the Western Regions and the Eastern Xia, when eminent and virtuous people took pravrajyā, from their early years they all learned to recite and uphold [texts]. Zhu Fotudeng was able to recite several millions of words of Buddhist scriptures. Buddhabhadra—here translated as 'Awakened Worthy'—had several fellow students who took recitation as their task; where the others took a month to master recitation, Buddhabhadra could remember it in a single day. His master sighed: 'One day of his study rivals thirty men.' Now, even the most foolish person, can he not memorize one phrase a day? Linking days into months and months into years, the accumulated effort will certainly be vast, and the added lessons will also be deep. His Way will naturally grow from the subtle; why worry about having nothing established?