釋氏稽古略 2.198

2.198

Dharma Master Huiyue's alternative title: The Emperor of Liang said, "The Way relies on humans for its propagation; principle is not conferred in vain. Matters depend on personal practice, and only then is the people's trust established." Dharma Master Huiyue's virtue was supreme in the human realm, and his Way covered the unseen underworld. On the eighth day of the fourth month, he invited the Master to the Hall of Equal Enlightenment to receive the bodhisattva precepts, and also held a pañcavārṣika assembly. After receiving the precepts, the Emperor ate only one meal a day, limited his diet to vegetables, and slept and dwelled in his palace halls as purely as a śramaṇa. In the fourth year of the Putong reign era, the Emperor decreed that neither within the court nor outside should anyone directly utter the name of Dharma Master Huiyue, giving him the alternative title "Zhizhe" (Wise One). The practice of śramaṇas having alternative titles began with this Dharma master. On the sixth day of the ninth month of the first year of the Datong reign era, National Preceptor Zhizhe Huiyue entered extinction at the age of eighty-four, having spent sixty-three monastic summers. The Emperor donned plain white mourning garments and attended the funeral, weeping and suspending court audience for seven days. On the twenty-ninth day of that month, an imperial decree ordered that he be buried to the left of Master Zhi's tomb on Mount Dulong. Forty-eight thousand people who had received the precepts from the Master wore hemp mourning clothes and wept as they escorted him to the burial site. In the second year of the Datong reign era, an imperial decree renamed Zhushan Li, where the Dharma master had lived, to Zhizhe Li (*Imperial Annals of the Liang Emperor*, and also the *Master's Stūpa Inscription*).