宋高僧傳 13.3

13.3

釋圓紹，姓孫氏，其先富陽人也，祖官于南燕，因為滑臺白馬人焉。年及識環，天然俊邁。隣兒戲玩，我且恬然；群從追隨，我惟閑靜。年當十八，方遂志出家，師事明福寺正覺禪師。覺見而異之，訓諸徒弟，獨許紹耳，曰：「真空門之偉器也。」至年二十二，於相州義檀香燈律師邊受具。登即尋師訪道，效祖參玄，二翼之餘，一盂之外，必無他物。唯誓禪宗立雪傳衣，是其素望也。至于三湘、五嶺、二蜀、兩京，凡曰叢林，一皆參禮。既探至賾，頓了心機，乃挂錫於夷門，即倉垣水南寺，今為開寶也。大中十年，適遇唐相國裴公休罷調商鼎，來鎮魏郊。同氣相求，一言道合，即命居今東上方院也。紹將聚禪徒，患其迫窄，遂開上院之西，損上益下。時檀施臻萃，倐成巨院，擁納之流，數盈二百，橫跨夷門山之峻嶺焉。紹即七祖荷澤神會禪師五葉法孫也。演其無念，示以真心，了達磨之密傳，極南能之深趣。時參學之眾，擁從且繁。遇元帥相國王晉公鐸，以紹道行通感，神祇効靈，降甘露於玄穹，泫嘉瑞於青檜，奏僖宗賜院額曰雙林，師號曰法濟。別勅令度侍者七人。其間法會興盛，士庶歸心，僅四十載，所化人可萬計，僧尼弟子五百餘人。以乾寧二年乙卯七月四日謂眾曰：「急急自了去，本為逃生死。若不解玄旨，何時得脫？吾景逼崦嵫，此為最後之言也。」於方丈中寂然而化，俗壽八十五，法臘六十三。勅許於本院西南隅建塔焉。越五年二月二日重開塔，髮長半寸，儀貌如生。乃以香華供養七日，遠近瞻禮，稱歎希奇。已而行茶毘，火中逈出五色神光，收舍利百餘粒，四眾隨心淘選，近一千粒，溫潤玉潔，璨爛珠圓，驗五分之熏成，匪一生之構集。四眾虔仰，復迎入塔，即昭宗皇帝戊午歲也。睢陽相國袁象先理于浚郊。弟子惠靄等冀終法乳，列狀乞舉行諡禮，梁乾化三年癸酉，太祖勅易名曰定覺，塔曰靈化。至貞明四年九月，惠靄等欲旌表師德立碑，勅允，開封尹王公瓚之文也。

Śramaṇa Yuanshao, whose secular surname was Sun, had ancestors from Fuyang. His grandfather served as an official in Southern Yan, and the family consequently became natives of Baima in Huatai. When his age reached the stage of knowing the jade ring, he was naturally eminent and extraordinary. When neighborhood children played games, he remained calm and tranquil; when his peers followed along, he was serene and quiet. When he reached eighteen, he finally fulfilled his aspiration to leave secular life, serving Dhyāna Master Zhengjue of Mingfu Temple as his teacher. Jue saw him and marveled at him; instructing his disciples, he gave praise solely to Shao, saying: 'He is truly a grand vessel of the gate of emptiness!' When he reached the age of twenty-two, he received full ordination from Vinaya Master Tanxiangdeng in Xiangzhou. He immediately sought teachers and inquired into the Way, emulating the patriarchs in plumbing the profound. Beyond his two robes and one bowl, he possessed absolutely nothing else. His lifelong wish was solely the vow of standing in the snow and transmitting the robe in the Chan tradition. Traversing the three Xiang rivers, the Five Ridges, the two regions of Shu, and the two capitals, wherever there was a monastery, he went and paid homage without exception. Having explored the utmost subtleties and suddenly enlightened to the workings of the mind, he hung up his staff at Yimen, which was Shuinan Temple at Cangyuan, now known as Kaibao. In the tenth year of Dazhong, he happened to meet the Tang prime minister, Lord Pei Xiu, who, having ceased harmonizing the cauldron of state, had come to govern the outskirts of Wei. Like minds seek each other out, and with one word they accorded with the Way; Pei immediately bade him reside at what is now the Eastern Upper Cloister. As Shao was about to assemble Chan followers, he was troubled by the cramped space; he therefore opened up the west of the Upper Cloister, reducing the upper to expand the lower. At that time, lay patrons gathered in abundance, and in no time a grand cloister was completed. Those who came clad in patched robes numbered more than two hundred, sprawling across the steep ridges of Mount Yimen. Shao was the fifth-generation Dharma grandson of the Seventh Patriarch, Dhyāna Master Shenhui of Heze. He expounded his teaching of non-thought and revealed the true mind, fathoming the esoteric transmission of Bodhidharma and reaching the profound import of Nanneng [Huineng]. At that time, the assembly of students came in dense crowds. Meeting Grand Marshal and Prime Minister Lord Wang Duo, the Duke of Jin, Wang Duo, seeing that Shao's cultivation of the Way resonated supernaturally and that divine beings manifested efficacy—sweet dew descending from the dark sky and auspicious signs glistening upon the green cypresses—memorialized Emperor Xizong to bestow the cloister plaque reading 'Shuanglin' and the master title 'Faji'. A separate imperial decree ordered the ordination of seven attendants for him. During that period, the Dharma assemblies flourished, and gentry and commoners turned their hearts to him; for nearly forty years, those he transformed could be counted in the tens of thousands, and his ordained disciples numbered more than five hundred. On the fourth day of the seventh month in the second year of Qianning, the yimao year, he said to the assembly: 'Hasten, hasten to resolve your own liberation; your original purpose was to escape birth and death. If you do not comprehend the profound import, when will you attain release? My daylight draws close to Mount Yanzi; these are my final words.' He passed away in silence in the abbot's quarters. His secular age was eighty-five, and his dharma age was sixty-three. Imperial permission was granted to erect a pagoda in the southwest corner of his cloister. After five years, on the second day of the second month, the pagoda was reopened; his hair had grown half an inch, and his countenance was as if alive. They made offerings of incense and flowers for seven days, and people from near and far came to gaze and pay homage, praising it as rare and extraordinary. Thereafter, they performed the cremation; from within the flames, a five-colored divine light arose far above, and they collected over a hundred relics (śarīra). The fourfold assembly sifted through the ashes according to their wishes and gathered nearly a thousand relics, warm and lustrous like pure jade, brilliant and round like pearls—proving the fumigation of the fivefold dharmakāya, and not merely the accumulation of a single lifetime. The fourfold assembly reverently looked up to them and enshrined them back into the pagoda; this was the wuwu year of Emperor Zhaozong. Prime minister Yuan Xiangxian of Suiyang was administering the Jun outskirts. Disciples such as Hui'ai and others, hoping to fulfill their debt of Dharma-milk, drew up a petition requesting the conferral of a posthumous title. In the third year of Qianhua under the Later Liang, the guiyou year, Taizu issued a decree changing the master's name to Dingjue, and the pagoda was named Linghua. In the ninth month of the fourth year of Zhenming, when Hui'ai and others wished to commemorate the master's virtue with a stele, an imperial decree granted permission; the text was written by Duke Wang Zan, the Prefect of Kaifeng.