高僧傳 12.6

12.6

Shi Tancheng was a native of Hebei. From youth he was humane and loving, extending his kindness even to insects. At the end of the Jin dynasty he came to Pengcheng, where he saw an eighty-year-old man and his wife in dire poverty and distress; he thereupon gave up his precepts to become their slave, performing menial service for several years. Yet inwardly he cultivated virtue without ever neglecting it, and his neighbors sighed in admiration. When the two elderly people died, the wages he earned from hired labor were entirely dedicated to generating merit for them, and he planned to use them to redeem himself. When this was completed, he wished to re-enter the monastic path, but the required ritual implements were not yet prepared.