釋氏稽古略 1.255

1.255

Śākyamuni Buddha. By examination: Master Mingjiao's Zhengzong ji states: When heaven and earth began anew, on the continent of Jambudvīpa there first arose kings called Great Persons. After the Great Persons passed away, kings succeeded one another because of them without end; from antiquity to the present, they can hardly be counted. In later generations there was a king called Mahāsammata. Mahāsammata produced Ikṣvāku. Ikṣvāku produced Ulkāmukha. Ulkāmukha produced Karikarṇi. Karikarṇi produced Nipurā. Nipurā produced Siṃhahanu. Siṃhahanu produced King Śuddhodana. However, of these seven generations, all of whom were kings, only Ikṣvāku and Śuddhodana were termed holy kings. The Tathāgata was precisely born from the holy king Śuddhodana. Formerly, in a past age, the Tathāgata met Dīpaṅkara Buddha in the great city of Padmāvatī. Dīpaṅkara bestowed upon him the prediction, saying, 'In the future you shall become a Buddha like me, named Śākyamuni.' Passing through innumerable kalpas down to the era of Kāśyapa Buddha, he thereupon accomplished the Way as a bodhisattva and ascended to be born in Tuṣita Heaven, fulfilling the status of succession to the post, named Great Being Prabhāpāla. When his time of responding [to the world] arrived, the Great Being took Kapilavastu as lying in the center of Jambudvīpa, and King Śuddhodana as belonging to the true lineage of a wheel-turning king, suitable to be born through. He forthwith relinquished his celestial life-span, manifested riding a white elephant, and descended from the sun into his mother Lady Māyā's right flank, where he rested. When he was about to be born, Māyā went beneath an aśoka tree in the royal park. Its blossoms were just then splendid; when the lady raised her hand wishing to pluck them, the holy child was born from her right flank. Divine dragons rained water to bathe him; the earth brought forth golden lotuses to uphold him. The holy child then took seven steps in each of the four directions, pointed with his hands above and below, and said, 'In the four directions, above, and below, only I am supreme.' The king soon took him to visit the divine temple; the divine statues rose to pay homage to him. Returning to the palace, they held a great gathering of worthies to name him, entitling him Sarvārthasiddha. When he grew somewhat older, teachers were ordered to instruct him in worldly texts. Before long he was installed as crown prince. A wife was wedded for him; the crown prince was already completely pure, and though he manifested following the worldly convention of marriage, he had no mundane desire. Due to past karmic connections, he pointed to his consort's belly and said, 'After six years, you shall bear a boy.' One day, he ordered his carriage wishing to go on an excursion; though he went forth successively through the four gates, in each he met with someone. In the end, moved by the aged, the sick, the dead, and the śramaṇa, his intention to renounce the household became even firmer. The crown prince was nineteen years old at the time. On the night of the eighth day of the second month, he rode his horse out through the northern gate, arriving at Mount Daṇḍaka. Resting briefly amid the forest, he then cast off his robes and crown, and with the jewelled sword he wore severed his beard and hair himself, vowing, 'May I, together with all beings, sever these afflictions.' A transformation person of the Śuddhāvāsa Heavens presented a saṅghāṭī robe to the crown prince, who thus obtained the Dharma robe and put it on. Proceeding into an auspicious place in the mountain, the jewelled mountain Sumeru, he dwelt there. At [the place of] Ārāḍa Kālāma he practiced the absorption of nothingness for three years; he proceeded again to the place of Udraka Rāmaputra and practiced the absorption of neither-perception-nor-non-perception for three years; he proceeded to Mount Gayāśīrṣa, mingling with non-Buddhists to practice austerities, eating hemp and barley daily. He dwelt there for six years, practicing with neither mental intention nor sensory reception, and the non-Buddhists were also converted. The sage then thought to himself, 'Now this austerity is not true liberation. I should receive food and afterward attain Buddhahood.' He immediately bathed in the Nairañjanā River and received milk rice offered by the cowherd maiden. Soon he went beneath the pippala tree. The lord of devas transformed a person to gather auspicious grass to serve as his seat. On the eve of the seventh day of the second month (the Zhou made the zi month the first month and the chou month the second month; the Han again made the yin month the first month and the chou month the twelfth month), he entered the true samādhi. When the morning star appeared on the eighth day, he manifested vast awakening, and thereupon attained equal, correct enlightenment. Ascending the vajra seat, the lord of devas took him as teacher and requested the turning of the wheel of the Dharma. Before this, Kauṇḍinya and the other five men had attended him in the mountains; at this time he delivered them first. Therefore he entered the Deer Park and expounded the Dharma of the Four Truths. Indeed, those who attained the fruit of the Way through this numbered in the hundreds of millions. He then went alone to the country of Magadha, converting the three Kāśyapa brothers, Uruvilvā[-kāśyapa and the others]. At that time, King Bimbisāra, the ruler of the country, had the Bamboo Grove park, which he donated to the Buddha as a monastery, inviting the Tathāgata to dwell in it. Before long, Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana of Rājagṛha both received conversion from him. The Tathāgata said, 'Those two who are coming shall be my foremost disciples.' Thereupon he delivered them. Earlier, Mahākāśyapa had entered the mountains to practice meditation; at this point he proceeded to the Bamboo Grove Monastery. The Tathāgata rose to welcome him and told the assembly, 'After my parinirvāṇa, that the Dharma will cover future ages for sixty thousand years is through the power of this person.' At this time the Tathāgata had already accomplished the Way for six years. Later they welcomed him to return to his homeland to see his father the king. The father king rejoiced greatly and consequently decreed that five hundred noble sons of his clan follow him into homelessness. When he returned to the palace, his son Rāhula paid homage to him, held the sage's robes, and told the assembly, 'This is indeed the Tathāgata.' Through this he resolved the crowd of suspicions for his mother. Later, as the period of his teaching was drawing near its end, he commanded Mahākāśyapa, saying, 'I now entrust to you the pure Dharma eye, the wondrous mind of nirvāṇa, the subtle and wondrous true Dharma of the real mark without marks. You should protect and uphold it.' And he instructed Ānanda to assist him in transmitting the teaching so that it would not be severed. Then he spoke a verse: 'The original dharma of dharmas is no-dharma; / the dharma of no-dharma is also a dharma. / Now when the no-dharma is entrusted, / what dharma among dharmas was ever a dharma?' Having spoken the verse, he further said to Mahākāśyapa: 'I also entrust to you the gold-threaded saṅghāṭī robe. You must transfer it to Maitreya Buddha, who succeeds to the post. Await his appearance in the world and guard it with care.' Mahākāśyapa reverently received the Buddha's command. One day, the World-Honoured One went to Kuśinagara between the twin śāla trees, intending to enter parinirvāṇa. It happened that the elder Cunda earnestly offered food, and the Tathāgata consequently expounded the Dharma extensively once more, delivered Subhadra, lay down on his right flank, and serenely passed into the great quiescence. Placing him within a golden coffin, they waited until Mahākāśyapa arrived, and only then did the samādhi fire flare up, consuming his body by itself; when it was ashes, the relics illuminated heaven and earth. Devas, humans, and divine dragons divided them and erected stūpas for them (Zhengzong ji). It also says: 'Examining the Tathāgata's birth, it corresponds to the eighth day of the fourth month of the jiayin year, the ninth year of King Zhao of the Zhou. His renunciation corresponds to the eighth day of the second month of the renshen year, the twenty-seventh year of King Zhao. His accomplishment of the Way corresponds to the wuyin year, the thirty-third year of King Zhao. His nirvana corresponds to the fifteenth day of the second month of the renshen year, the thirty-sixth year of King Mu. A total of one thousand and seventeen years after his passing, in the dingmao year, the tenth year of the Yongping reign of Emperor Xiaoming of the Han, his teachings reached China. Alas, the Tathāgata manifested a worldly lifespan of seventy-nine years in all; for forty-nine years he sustained the world with the true Dharma, converting and delivering sentient beings in numbers beyond count. As for the Tathāgata's birth and extinction, as well as his renunciation and accomplishment of the Way, perhaps they correspond to the years of King Zhao and King Mu of the Zhou. However, from King Wu of the Zhou down to King Li, there are no exact year counts; only with King Xuan do they first appear. Old records, then, state the ninth, twenty-seventh, and thirty-third years of King Zhao, and the thirty-sixth year of King Mu; some people strongly disagree with this. I once debated this: therefore, examining the Grand Historian's "Chronological Table of the Three Dynasties", and reading its preface, it says, "When I read the genealogical records, there were year counts from the Yellow Emperor onward. Examining the chronological tables and genealogies, from beginning to end regarding the transmission of the Five Virtues, the ancient texts are all divergent and contradictory. That the Master did not arrange their months and years in sequence—could that have been in vain?" By this it is verified that prior to the Three Dynasties it was not really that there were no year counts; rather, the Grand Historian adopted Confucius's purpose in compiling the Shangshu and therefore did not record their years, but instead composed the chronological tables.' [Qi]song also commented, saying: 'As for his entrusting the Dharma to Mahākāśyapa, at what time was it, and how must it be shown? It is said: At the beginning of the Mahāparinirvāṇa assembly, the Tathāgata told the monks, "You should not speak like this. All of the unsurpassed true Dharma that I now possess has been fully entrusted to Mahākāśyapa. This Kāśyapa shall serve as a great refuge for you all." This makes it clear' (Nirvāṇa Sūtra, fascicle 2). The Zhengzong ji further comments, saying: 'The two texts Baolin [zhuan] and Deng[shi] both record the times of the Indian patriarchs' entering extinction to match the cyclical years of the Zhou and Qin in China. However, before King Xuan of the Zhou, there were never fixed years; moreover, China and India are distant by several tens of thousands of li. When those figures passed away, it was sometimes more than a thousand years apart. The events being vague and separated by distance, I fear that by collating through multiple translations it is not easy to attain the truth; hence I have omitted their year counts and cyclical characters, and simply preserved their imperial eras. Only for Śākyamuni Buddha, Bodhidharma, down to the six patriarchs in China can the years and cyclical dates of their entering extinction be somewhat deduced and collated, so they are fully recorded' (From Master Mingjiao's Zhengzong ji). The Chuanfa zhengzong ji was composed by Chan Master Qisong of Fori in Hangzhou under the Song. The master was a son of the Li clan of Tanzin in Tengzhou, Guangxi circuit. His mother was of the Zhong clan. At seven years old, he left home to serve a śramaṇa of Dongshan. At thirteen, he was ordained. At nineteen, he traveled abroad down the Yuan and Xiang rivers and crossed Mount Heng, calling upon Chan Master Shending Yin. Yin spoke with him and found him remarkable, yet he had no awakening. Traveling between Yuanzhou and Junzhou, he received prediction and verification from the venerable Cong of Dongshan. He called upon knowledgeable teachers everywhere; at night he placed a statue of Avalokiteśvara upon his head and recited her name, never sleeping until he reached ten thousand times. He did not study the worldly classics and commentaries, yet was able to compose the Yuanjiao of more than one hundred thousand words, elucidating that the Ways of Confucianism and Buddhism are of one thread, to counter Han [Yu]'s school of anti-Buddhist discourse. Later he resided at the Yong'an hermitage on Lingyin in Hangzhou, authoring the Chanmen dingzu tu, Chuanfa zhengzong ji, and Fujiao bian, presenting a memorial of ten thousand words to Emperor Renzong. Submitted through Kaifeng prefecture, on the seventeenth day of the third month of the seventh year of the Jiayou reign, it was decreed to be sent to the Institute for the Translation of Sutras for compilation into the canon, and an edict was issued praising and honoring him, bestowing the title Master Mingjiao. The grand councilor Han Qi and participant in determining governmental affairs Ouyang Xiu received him and treated him with reverence. Ouyang Xiu said, 'I did not expect that among the monks there would be such a man!' After returning east to dwell at Yong'an, on the morning of the fourth day of the sixth month of the fifth year of the Xining reign of Shenzong, he wrote a verse: 'In the coming night, the moon will be bright; / today I rejoice to walk alone. / I will not follow the old master of Damei, / greedily chasing the sound of a flying squirrel.' At midnight he transformed. Five parts remained indestructible through jhāpita: his skull, ears, tongue, genitals, and recitation beads. His cranial bone produced relics, red and white, crystalline and pure. On the eighth day of that month, monastics and laity collected the indestructible parts and buried them to the left of his former residence, Yong'an hermitage. His age was sixty-six; his monastic age was fifty-three. The details are seen in the Record of the Master's Deeds and Conduct composed by Chen Shunyu, Vice Director of the Bureau of State Farms in the Ministry of Revenue. The master's courtesy name was Zhongling; his sobriquet was Qianzi. He was the dharma heir of Chan Master Cong of Dongshan; Cong was the heir of Zhen of Wenshu; Zhen was the heir of Mi of Deshan; Mi was the heir of Chan Master Yan of Yunmen (Wudeng huiyuan). Śākyamuni Tathāgata was the fourth Buddha of the Auspicious Kalpa.