釋鑑稽古略續集 3.256

3.256

象先禪師　天台慈雲寺。釋真清。號象先。長沙湘潭羅氏子。生而頴異。日課經史數千言。終身不忘一字。年十五補邑庠。十九投南嶽寶珠和尚。薙染受具戒。看無字話久之。因舟觸岸有聲忽有省。珠喜而囑。宜善護持。珠化後師駐覺皇患疾。夢關君授藥而愈。眾扣師室。師從容語曰。圓宗無象。滿教難思。會旨者山嶽易移。乖宗者錙銖難入。眾稽首而退。一夕夢琳宮寶樹彌陀三聖。師方展拜傍有沙彌。授與一牌曰。戒香薰修。寤中品往生之象也。萬曆丁亥八月。蒙慈聖太后賜金紫方袍以寵之。戊子正月二十九日告門人曰。吾淨土緣熟。聖境冥現。此人間世固不久留。至夕別眾而逝。荼毘舍利紅白綠三色。香氣郁郁。壽五十七。臘三十七。塔于寺西緇文溪之上。

Chan Master Xiangxian: From Ciyun Monastery on Mount Tiantai; śramaṇa Zhenqing, sobriquet Xiangxian; a son of the Luo clan of Xiangtan in Changsha. Extraordinary from birth, he daily studied several thousand words of sūtras and histories, never forgetting a single character for the rest of his life. At age fifteen, he was admitted as a county student. At nineteen, he went to the Venerable Baozhu of Mount Nanyue, shaved his head, and received the complete precepts. He investigated the word "wu" (no) for a long time; when a boat struck the shore with a sound, he suddenly had an awakening. Baozhu was pleased and admonished him to protect and uphold it well. After Baozhu passed away, the master stayed at Juehuang and fell ill; he dreamed that Lord Guan bestowed medicine upon him, and he was cured. The assembly knocked at the master's room, and the master spoke to them leisurely, saying: "The perfect school has no marks; the full teaching is difficult to conceive. For one who comprehends the purport, mountains and peaks are easily moved; for one who goes against the school, even an ounce cannot enter." The assembly bowed their heads and withdrew. One night, he dreamed of the jeweled trees of a palace and the Three Holy Ones of Amitābha. While the master was bowing, there was a novice monk beside him who handed him a tablet, saying: "Cultivated with the fragrance of the precepts." Upon waking, [he knew] it was an omen of rebirth in the middle grade. In the eighth month of the dinghai year of the Wanli era, he was favored with the bestowal of a purple-gold square robe by Empress Dowager Cisheng. On the twenty-ninth day of the first month of the wuzi year, he said to his disciples, "My affinity with the Pure Land has matured, and the holy realm is secretly appearing; I certainly cannot linger in this human realm for long." By evening, he bid farewell to the assembly and passed away. His cremation yielded relics of three colors—red, white, and green—with a fragrant aroma. He was fifty-seven years of age, with thirty-seven monastic years. A stupa was erected for him above Zhiwen Creek, west of the monastery.