續高僧傳 30.19

30.19

Śramaṇa Fayun was surnamed Chen and was a native of Suzhou. He longed for and emulated worldly companions, being particularly skilled at banquet entertainments, with a free and far-reaching bearing that was rarely matched in its elegance. He recited more than a hundred fascicles of various funerary inscriptions and ancient guiding texts, together with those authored by various worthy scholars such as Wang Sengru. When it came to guiding and elucidating, he was adept at quoting them appropriately. He was also versed in more than seven hundred melodies of scriptural cantillation. Whenever there was an overnight fast, both scriptural reading and guiding tasks were entrusted to Yun. When he reached the age of thirty, he grew weary of the clamour and commotion, for invitations and written requests overlapped day after day. Therefore, on New Year’s Day, he severed the cords [of engagement] and broke with them forever. He immediately listened to the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and was soon able to rehearse it. He lamented having wasted his efforts and vainly spent his breath. Hearing that the pure assembly of Qixia was praised throughout the region south of the Yangzi, he followed their fame and went there at once to receive instruction in the way of meditation from them. Further, hearing of the Lingyan [Monastery] on Mount Tai, he travelled there to follow in their footsteps, engaging in the austerities of the pratyutpanna-samādhi, with an exceptionally firm determination to be pure and having no desire for fame. He shouldered loads of stone and chopped firewood, taking provision as his duty. In his later years, he returned to his home region. There was a stone image that had floated along the river, as recounted in the previous biography; it was later consumed by fire, and since its proportions and measurements were not known, there was no way to reconstruct it. Thus, on the former foundation of the stone image, he vowed to worship eighty-four thousand stupas. When his meritorious deed was completed, he was spiritually visited by an old countrywoman who brought him a scroll of text; when he opened and read it, it turned out to be the karmic account of the former image. Now having its dimensions, he fashioned it accordingly, and there were great signs of spiritual efficacy. In the sea lay Yanghu Island, three hundred [li] from the coast. Yun went there to practice serene meditation, wearing only coarse cloth and mugwort clothing, for the sake of practicing compassion. When he first arrived, he encountered strange and anomalous great winds and demonic beings, but seeing them he remained as normal, the hairs of his body not even stirring. After ninety days, he was completely at peace. Knowing his life was coming to an end, he returned to Qixia, and soon passed away. His age was thirty-five; that was the fourth year of the Renshou era [604 CE].