續高僧傳 9.22

9.22

Śramaṇa Huixuan. His secular surname was Zhou. His ancestors were originally from Runan; at the end of the Han dynasty, amid its collapse, they fled to Jiangzuo. They resided in Xiaozhen for many generations, and thus became people of Yangxian in Yixing. His grandfather Shao was General of the Palace Interior under the Qi. His father Fu was Commandant of the Changshui Cavalry under the Liang. Both lived leisurely behind simple brushwood gates without seeking fame or prominence, passing their years in ease and retiring from agriculture into official service. Xuan's sagacity came from within, and he displayed upright conduct even as a young boy. He delved into the Six Classics and broadly understood their main ideas; this, however, was merely regular practice from family training, not what he truly loved. At the age of eighteen, he sighed deeply and said: 'Taking Zhou and Confucius to heart, one prioritizes benevolence and righteousness; submitting one's mind to Huang-Lao, one values voidness and non-being. Yet cycling through birth and death, passing into and out of worldly defilements, these are entangling karmas of the worldly realm, not the essential path of transcendence.' Having brought forth this rare aspiration, he experienced an extraordinary spiritual response. He dreamt of a five-tiered pagoda, adorned with painted colors, towering high and steep. Thereupon he prostrated himself, wishing to ascend this pagoda. In a brief moment, he suddenly stood atop the wheel spire, experiencing an unprecedented joy of body and mind at that moment. Thereupon he intended to travel to the capital; stopping on the way in Zhufang, he met Dharmabhāṇaka Xu of Zhulin Temple, who deeply admired and praised him. He then took refuge under him, left the household life, and took Xu as his preceptor for the ten precepts. Soon he departed for the capital and dwelt at Ganlu Gu Temple. After receiving full ordination, he received the Daśabhāṇavāra Vinaya from Master Feng of Jingzhong Temple. He also listened to Master Chuo of Longguang Temple expounding the Tattvasiddhi-śāstra. Following Chuo's transformation, he sought out many other masters, directing his attention to the Abhidharma and the eight skandhakas. Desiring to explore the profound mysteries together and gather all their essences, he returned to study with the Longguang scholar and Grand Saṅgha Leader (Da sengdu), Dharmabhāṇaka Shu, investigating the Tattvasiddhi with thorough precision. When Shu passed away, Xuan personally received his final testamentary entrustment. Meeting with the upheaval of the Liang royal house and the desolation of the capital's temples, he tore his robes, grasped his monk's staff, and came to stay in Nanxu, truly requiting the kindness of his home territory while cultivating Dharma activities. When Emperor Wu of Chen was still a commoner, repeatedly tested in Zhufang, he had long heard of Xuan's high reputation and held him in deep esteem. When Sikong Lord Hou governed this province in succession, he bowed before him with an open heart. In the third year of Yongding, when Lord Hou entered the court to assist the administration, he requested Xuan to go to the capital to lecture on the Nirvāṇa Sūtra and the Tattvasiddhi-śāstra at Baima Temple. Scholars gathered like clouds, coming from thousands of miles away; they wiped their sweat and waved their sleeves, stirring wind and rain, such that no Dharma assembly's grandeur could rival it. In the second year of Tianjia, the scholar Baochi and others, numbering two hundred and seventy people, requested him to lecture at Xiangong Temple. In the fourth year of Taijian, Emperor Xuan issued an edict requesting him to move his lectures to Dong'an. In earlier days when the Later Sovereign was still in the Eastern Palace (Chunfang), he often attended doctrinal assemblies and was present. His vast, powerful eloquence especially delighted the prince's mind; upon succeeding to the imperial throne, the emperor held him in deep reverence and respect. In the first year of Zhide, an imperial edict appointed him Grand Saṅgha Leader of the capital; in the fourth year, he was transferred to Grand Saṅgha Controller (Da sengzheng). When the realm was unified under the Sui, he came to dwell in the Xu region; following conditions, he promulgated and disseminated the teachings without missing the proper seasons. On the tenth day of the seventh month in the ninth year of Kaihuang, he passed away at Zhong Temple, aged seventy-five. On the twenty-eighth day of that month, he was entombed on the crags of Zhongshan. Xuan's religious practice was pure and elevated, and the spirits responded to him; his spiritual resonance was inconceivable. Formerly, during the Chen dynasty, in the middle of each summer he was regularly invited to the Leyou Garden to expound the Nirvāṇa Sūtra and the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā Sūtra on behalf of the seven ancestral sovereigns of the Chen family and the spirits of the six shrines of the capital of Yangdu. Spirits' seats were also set out together in the lecture hall. Thus, Kingfisher banners, peacock-feather parasols, feathered garments, and rainbow skirts mingled among people, astonishing the spirits and dazzling the eyes. In receiving and sending off those who came and went, clouds and rain inevitably fell, the unseen appointment never failing for over ten years. Often, taking a nap to rest after eating and before lecturing, when the time for lecturing approached, he would always see a man in red clothes calling out, 'Dharmabhāṇaka, it is time to arise!' Ren Zhong, General of the Army of the Chen, was a commander from his youth and was deeply fond of hunting. Yet having planted superior causes in past lives, the trigger for goodness was about to emerge. The meat in his kitchen and stores suddenly emitted a wondrous light; seeing this, he found it uncanny, privately feeling anxiety and fear. At night he dreamt of an extraordinary person who came to tell him: 'If you request the Dong'an master to lecture, what you have seen will surely cause no worry.' Awakening soon after, he leapt for joy, and immediately burned his hunting nets, bird traps, and arrow cords. He subsequently enticed Xuan for two summers to lecture in his mansion; because of this, he repented, upheld the two sūtras, and received the precept against killing. Thus his spiritual traces were truly numerous; this is not even one ten-thousandth of them. In total, he lectured on the profound meaning of the Tattvasiddhi sixty-three times, its text fifteen times, and the Nirvāṇa Sūtra and the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā each over twenty times. For some fifty years, his Dharma activities continued uninterrupted; other various texts are omitted and not recorded. Those who received the bodhisattva precepts, such as Sikong Wu Mingche, along with dukes, marquises, generals, ministers, nobles, and court officials, numbered more than several thousand, impossible to record fully. His disciple Zhiyu and others, considering that his voice and demeanor were gone forever and his lingering teachings would become hollow, felt that without a monumental stele there would be no way to display his renown and actuality; they therefore engraved an inscription in the temple. The bodhisattva precept disciple, Editorial Director (Zhuzuo lang) Wang Zhou of Langya, composed the text.