佛祖統紀 7.9

7.9

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'.