釋氏稽古略 3.212

3.212

Chan Master Niaoke. His taboo name was Daolin. He was a son of the Pan family of Fuyang in Hangzhou. When his mother, of the Zhu clan, gave birth to him, an unusual fragrance and brilliant light filled the room, so he was named Xiangguang. At the age of nine he left home. At twenty-one he received the precepts at Guoyuan Monastery in Jingzhou. Later, he went to Dharma Master Fuli at Ximing Monastery in Chang'an and studied the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and the Awakening of Faith. Fuli showed him the "Verses on True and False" and bade him cultivate dhyāna. The master asked, "At first, how does one contemplate? How does one apply the mind?" Fuli was silent for a long time without speaking. The master made three prostrations and withdrew. When Emperor Daizong summoned Chan Master Daoqin of Mount Jingshan to the imperial palace, the master went and had an audience with him, attaining awakening to the essentials of mind. When he returned south to Yongfu Monastery on Gushan in Qiantang, there was a pratyekabuddha stūpa. At that time monastics and laity held a Dharma assembly together; the master shook his khakkhara and entered. Chan Master Taoguang of Lingyin Monastery said, "Why do you make noise at such a Dharma assembly?" The master said, "Without noise, who would know there is an assembly?" Later, seeing on Mount Qinwang north of the West Lake a tall pine whose luxuriant branches and leaves coiled and twisted like an umbrella, he then took up residence atop it. Thus the people of the time called him Chan Master Niaoke (Bird's Nest). A magpie built a nest beside him, so people also called him Magpie-Nest Reverend. By the Yuanhe era, Attendant Gentleman Bai Juyi, having left his post as Secretariat Drafter to serve as Prefect of Hangzhou, heard of the master's Way. Coming to see the master lodging in the nest, he asked, "The place where the master dwells is extremely perilous." The master said, "The Governor's danger is even far greater." [Bai] said, "This disciple holds an office that guards the mountains and rivers—what danger could there be?" The master said, "Firewood and flame interacting, the nature of consciousness never ceasing—how could that not be perilous?" He asked, "What is the great meaning of the Buddha Dharma?" The master said, "Do no evil, reverently practice all good." [Bai] said, "Even a three-year-old child understands how to say that!" The master said, "Although a three-year-old child can say it, an eighty-year-old man cannot practice it." The Attendant Gentleman admired him with sighing praise, and repeatedly approached him to inquire about the Way. He then built a bamboo pavilion on the lake near the master's dwelling to facilitate morning and evening visits for instruction. This bamboo pavilion is today called Guanghua Monastery; the Attendant Gentleman's surviving portrait is preserved there. On the tenth day of the second month in the fourth year of the Changqing era of Emperor Muzong, the master told his attendants, "My retribution is now exhausted." Having spoken these words, he sat cross-legged and transformed. By imperial order he was posthumously titled Chan Master Yuanxiu. The master was a Dharma heir of Chan Master Guoyi Qin, a collateral branch of the Fourth Patriarch (Transmission of the Lamp).