宋高僧傳 13.11

13.11

釋師備，俗姓謝，閩人也。少而憨黠，酷好垂釣，往往泛小艇南臺江自娛。其舟若虛，同類不我測也。一日，忽發出塵意，投釣棄舟，上芙蓉山出家，咸通初年也。後於豫章開元寺具戒。還歸故里，山門力役，無不率先。布衲添麻，芒鞵續草，減食而食，語默有常，人咸畏之，汪汪大度，雖研、桑巧計不能量也。備同學法兄，則雪峯存師也，一再相逢，存多許與，故目之為「備頭陀」焉。有日，謔之曰：「頭陀何不遍參去？」備對曰：「達磨不來東土，二祖不往西天。」存深器重之。先開荒雪峯，備多率力。王氏始有閩土，奏賜紫衣，號宗一大師。以開平二年戊辰十一月二十七日示疾而終，春秋七十四，僧臘四十四。閩越忠懿王王氏樹塔。備三十年演化，禪侶七百許人，得其法者眾，推桂琛為神足矣。至今浙之左右山門盛傳此宗，法嗣繁衍矣。其於建立透過大乘初門。江表學人無不乘風偃草歟。

Shi Shibei's secular surname was Xie, and he was a native of Min. In his youth, though simple-minded, he was shrewd, and he was exceedingly fond of angling, often drifting in a small boat on the Nantai River to amuse himself. His boat was as if empty, and his peers could not fathom him. One day, the aspiration to transcend the worldly dust suddenly arose in him: he cast away his fishing line, abandoned his boat, and ascended Mount Furong to undergo pravrajyā; this was in the early years of the Xiantong reign era. Later, he received the complete precepts (upasampadā) at Kaiyuan Temple in Yuzhang. Returning to his native place, whenever there was physical labor at the monastery, he never failed to take the lead. He patched his cloth cassock with hemp and mended his straw sandals with reeds; he reduced his rations when he ate; and his speech and silence were constant. Everyone stood in awe of him. His magnanimity was vast and profound, beyond the measure of even the clever calculations of Ji Yan and Sang Hongyang. Bei's fellow student and elder Dharma-brother was Master Cun of Xuefeng. Meeting time and again, Cun praised and approved him greatly, and thus referred to him as "Ascetic Bei" (Bei Toutuo). One day, he teased him, saying, "Why does the ascetic not go on an itinerant pilgrimage?" Bei replied, "Bodhidharma did not come to the Eastern Land; the Second Patriarch did not go to the Western Heavens." Cun regarded him with deep respect. When Xuefeng was first cleared and founded, Bei contributed much effort. When the Wang clan first held the territory of Min, they memorialized the throne to bestow on him a purple robe and the title Grand Master Zongyi. On the twenty-seventh day of the eleventh month in the second year of Kaiping, a wuchen year (908 CE), he manifested illness and died at the age of seventy-four, with a saṅgha age of forty-four. King Zhongyi of Minyue of the Wang clan erected a pagoda for him. Bei preached and transformed others for thirty years; his dhyāna companions numbered some seven hundred, and those who attained his Dharma were numerous, with Guichen regarded as the foremost. Down to the present day, among the monasteries on the left and right of Zhejiang, this lineage is widely transmitted and its Dharma heirs have flourished. In establishing [teachings], he passed through the initial portal of the Mahāyāna, and among students in the region south of the Yangtze, none failed to bend like grass before the wind.