釋氏稽古略 4.270

4.270

宋四月。西蜀嘉州奏。風折大樹枯株有僧在定。髭髮蒙密指爪纏身。帝令送至京師。秋八月迎入禁中。譯經院三藏大師金總持。鳴金磬出其定。僧曰。我東林遠法師之弟慧持也。西遊峨嵋。因入定于此。遠公無恙否。三藏曰。遠公東晉人。去世已七百年。僧遂不語。三藏徐啟。今欲何歸。僧曰陳留縣。即復入定。乃用其言葬陳留。帝令繪其像頒天下。御製贊三首曰。七百年前老古錐。定中消息許誰知。爭如隻履西歸去。生死徒勞未作皮。藏山於澤亦藏身。天下無藏道可親。為語莊周休擬議。樹中不是負趍人。有情身不是無情。此彼人人定裏身。會得菩提本無樹。不須辛苦問盧能（普燈錄二十二卷。慧持見東晉義熙八年）。

Under the Song, in the fourth month, Jiazhou in Western Shu memorialised that a great tree broken by the wind had a monk within its withered trunk in samādhi, his beard and hair dense and thick, and his fingernails wrapping around his body. The Emperor ordered that he be brought to the capital. In autumn, the eighth month, he was welcomed into the palace. Tripiṭaka Master Jin Zongchi of the Bureau for Translating Scriptures struck a golden chime to bring him out of his samādhi. The monk said: "I am Huichi, younger brother of Dharma Master [Hui]yuan of Donglin. While traveling west to Mount Emei, I entered samādhi here. Is Master Yuan well?" The Tripiṭaka master said: "Master Yuan was a man of the Eastern Jin; he passed away seven hundred years ago." The monk thereupon fell silent. The Tripiṭaka master gently inquired: "Where do you wish to go now?" The monk said: "Chenliu County," and immediately returned into samādhi. Following his words, they buried him in Chenliu. The Emperor ordered his portrait to be painted and distributed throughout the empire, and composed three royal eulogies, saying: "An old point from seven hundred years ago, / Who could know the news within his samādhi? / How does this compare to returning west with a single shoe? / In life and death, he toiled in vain without [casting off] the hide. // Hiding a mountain in a marsh is also hiding the body; / Where nothing is hidden in the world, the Way may be approached. / Tell Zhuang Zhou not to deliberate: / The one in the tree is not a man who runs carrying [a boat]. // A sentient body is not insentient; / Here and there, everyone is a body in samādhi. / Once you understand that Bodhi originally has no tree, / You need not laboriously ask Lu Neng." (Pu deng lu, scroll 22; Huichi is seen under the eighth year of the Yixi era of the Eastern Jin).