高僧傳 7.34

7.34

Shi Sengbao was a native of Jingzhao; in his youth he received instruction from Master Kumārajīva within the Passes. During the Yongchu era of the Song, he traveled to Northern Xu and entered the Huangshan Hermitage. He further called upon the two masters Jing and Ding to advance his studies. There he held a twenty-one-day Samantabhadra repentance fast. On the seventh day, a white swan flew in and alighted before Samantabhadra's seat, leaving only after the midday incense circumambulation was completed. As evening approached on the twenty-first day, four men in yellow robes circumambulated the pagoda several times and suddenly vanished. [Seng]bao had had lofty aspirations since youth, and now with these miraculous responses added to them, his unflagging devotion became all the more zealous. Every day he chanted over ten thousand words of scripture and regularly bowed in worship several hundred times to the Buddha.