佛祖統紀 7.9

7.9

八祖左溪尊者玄朗（與本朝聖祖諱上下字同）字慧明。婺州東陽人。姓傳氏。雙林大士六世孫也。母葛氏。感異夢而有娠（唐太宗貞觀十八年生）既產未嘗作嬰兒啼。每見人則欣笑盈面。九歲（高宗永徽二年）肄業清泰寺。受經日過七紙。唐武后如意二年（時年五十）落髮得戒。聞天台盛弘止觀。即往求學。未幾一家宗趣解悟無遺。常以十八種物行頭陀行。依憑巖穴建立招提。面列翠峯左縈碧㵎。因自號曰左溪。每言。泉石可以洗昏蒙。雲松可以遺身世。常宴居一室。自以為法界之寬。心不離定口不嘗藥。耄耆之歲同於壯齡。揉紙而衣掬溪而飲。洗鉢則群猿爭捧。誦經則眾禽交翔。幽棲林谷深以為樂。一日有盲狗。至山長嘷伏地。師為行懺。不逾旬日雙目俱明。每翹跪祈請。願生兜率內院。斂念之頃。忽感舍利從空而下（天寶中建塔奉藏。會昌發毀寺。僧緘而閟之。至皇朝開寶六年。復建塔藏之本山東南隅）開元十六年。州刺史王正容。屢屈入城冀親法喜。師不欲往教。辭之以疾。與永嘉真覺為同門友。嘗貽書招覺山居。覺復書千餘言。有諠不在廛。寂不在山之語（今永嘉集。有答友人書。近世有左溪住山。清穆刊二書於山中。而序之曰。左溪永嘉同道也。左溪之言非不知也。彼將有激云耳。永嘉之言非責也。彼將有說云耳。此常人所不能知也。反是而議者惑也）師所居蘭若坐非正陽。將移殿與像。用力實艱杖策指揮。工人聽命為日未久。舊制儼然山水頻涸。眾以為患。舉杖刺之巖泉涌出。嘗累成二塔。繪事悉煎香汁不用牛膠（此用觀音諸陀羅尼經畫像之法）天寶十三載九月十九日。呼門人謂曰。吾六即道圓。萬行無得。戒為心本。汝等師之。即端坐長別。壽八十二。夏三十一。弟子有夢。其居寶閣第四重者。寤以告隣。隣夢亦協。時以為表第四天慈氏內院也。荼毘已。門人分舍利為二分。一塔左溪之西原。遵像法之遺制。一塔東陽之東原。尉邑人之後思。司封李華。為之銘云。稟法十二人。的嗣曰荊溪。新羅傳道者。法融。理應。純英。撰法華科文二卷。及修治法華文句。吳越王。請諡明覺尊者。

The Eighth Patriarch, the Venerable Zuoxi, Xuanlang (sharing his upper and lower characters with the taboo name of the Holy Ancestor of the reigning dynasty), had the courtesy name Huiming. He was a native of Dongyang in Wuzhou, of the Fu clan, and a sixth-generation descendant of the Mahāsattva of Shuanglin. His mother, of the Ge clan, conceived him upon sensing an extraordinary dream (he was born in the eighteenth year of the Zhenguan reign of Emperor Taizong of the Tang). Once born, he never cried like an infant; whenever he saw people, his face was filled with joyful smiles. At the age of nine (the second year of the Yonghui reign of Emperor Gaozong), he pursued his studies at Qingtai Monastery, reciting more than seven sheets of sūtra text daily. In the second year of the Ruoyi reign of Empress Wu of the Tang (at the age of fifty), he shaved his head and received the precepts. Hearing that Tiantai was vigorously propagating cessation and contemplation, he went there to study. Before long, he comprehended the central tenets of this one house without remainder. He always practiced the ascetic practices with the eighteen requisites, relying on rock caves to establish a monastery, facing a row of emerald peaks with an azure stream winding to the left; thus he styled himself 'Zuoxi' ('Left Stream'). He often said, 'Springs and rocks can wash away obscurity and darkness; clouds and pines can make one forget body and world.' He constantly dwelt in quietude in a single room, considering it to possess the expanse of the Dharma realm. His mind never departed from samādhi, and his mouth never tasted medicine; in his advanced age he was just as in his prime. He crumpled paper for clothing and scooped from the stream to drink. When he washed his bowl, troops of monkeys vied to hold it; when he chanted the sūtras, flocks of birds circled above. He dwelt in seclusion in the forest valleys, finding deep joy in it. One day, a blind dog reached the mountain, howled lengthily, and prostrated on the ground. The Master performed repentance on its behalf; within ten days, both its eyes were bright. Whenever he knelt upright in prayer, he vowed to be born in the inner courtyard of Tuṣita; in the brief moment of gathering his thoughts, he suddenly elicited relics falling from the sky. (During the Tianbao reign a stūpa was built to house and enshrine them. When the Huichang persecution destroyed the monasteries, the monks sealed and concealed them. In the sixth year of the Kaibao reign of the present dynasty, a stūpa was rebuilt to enshrine them at the southeastern corner of his home mountain.) In the sixteenth year of the Kaiyuan reign, the prefect Wang Zhengrong repeatedly invited him to enter the city, hoping to draw near to the joy of the Dharma; the Master did not wish to go teach, and declined on the grounds of illness. He was a fellow disciple of Zhenjue of Yongjia. He once sent a letter inviting Jue to dwell in the mountains; Jue replied in over a thousand words, containing the phrase: 'Clamor is not in the marketplace; quietude is not in the mountain.' (The present Yongjia ji contains the 'Letter in Reply to a Friend'. In recent times, when Zuoxi was residing in the mountain, Qingmu printed the two letters on the mountain, and prefaced them, saying: 'Zuoxi and Yongjia shared the same Way. Zuoxi's words were not born of ignorance; he was merely trying to provoke him. Yongjia's words were not a rebuke; he merely had an explanation to make. This is something ordinary people cannot understand; to argue to the contrary is delusion.') The monastery where the Master lived did not face directly south. Wishing to move the hall and statues, which was arduous work, he directed it with his walking staff; the workmen followed his orders, and before long, the old structure stood augustly. The mountain springs frequently ran dry, which the multitude considered a hardship; he raised his staff and struck the rock, and a spring gushed forth. He once built two stūpas, and for all the painting work, fragrant decoction was boiled and no ox glue was used (this followed the method for painting images from the various Avalokiteśvara dhāraṇī sūtras). On the nineteenth day of the ninth month in the thirteenth year of the Tianbao reign, he summoned his disciples and said to them: 'My Way of the six identities is complete; among the ten thousand practices, there is nothing to be attained. The precepts are the root of the mind; take them as your teacher.' He then sat upright and bade eternal farewell. He was eighty-two years of age, with thirty-one Dharma years. A disciple dreamed that he was dwelling in the fourth level of a jeweled pavilion; on awakening he told his neighbor, whose dream was also in concord. At that time, it was taken to represent the inner courtyard of the Benevolent One in the Fourth Heaven. After his cremation, the disciples divided his relics into two portions: one stūpa was on the western plateau of Zuoxi, honoring the bequeathed system of the semblance Dharma; one stūpa was on the eastern plateau of Dongyang, consoling the later longing of the townsfolk. Li Hua, director of the bureau of honors, composed an inscription for him, saying: 'Twelve people received the Dharma; his true successor was Jingxi. Those who transmitted the Way to Silla were Beop-yung, I-eung, and Sun-yeong.' He composed the Outline of the Lotus Sūtra in two fascicles, and revised the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra. The King of Wuyue requested the posthumous title 'Venerable Mingjue'.