宋高僧傳 23.27

23.27

釋息塵，姓楊氏，并州人也。父遷貿有無，營利而已。其母氏甞夢人服裝偉麗，稱寄宵宿，便覺娠妊。生而有異，童稚不群。每聞鐘唄之音，凝神側耳。年方十二，因夢金人瑰奇之狀，引之入精廬。明旦告白二親，懇求出家。未允之前，泣而不食。父母憫其天然，情何厭塞，遂曲順之。即投草堂院，從師誦《淨名經》、《菩薩戒》，達宵不寐。將周一祀，捨本諷通。年當十七，便聽習《維摩》講席，粗知大義。及乎弱冠，乃圓上品，執持律範，曾無缺然。年二十三，文義斡通，於崇福寺宗感法師勝集傳授。復學因明、唯識，不虧敷演，學徒頴脫者數人。崇福寺辯才大師從式最為高足。於天祐二年，李氏奄有河東，武皇帝請居大安寺淨土院，四事供養。專覽藏教，修鍊上生業，設無遮大齋，前後五會。塵甞以身飼狼虎，入山谷中，其獸近嗅而奔走。又於林薄裸體，以啖蚊虻。乃遊仙巖嶽寺，養道棲神。復看大藏經匝，設齋，然一指，伸其報慶。彼寺有聖觀音菩薩像，長爥七燈，香華供獻。後被諸生就請下山，城內傳揚大論，四序無輟。逐月設沐浴，臨河就沼，投飼水族；以己噠嚫，旋贖羽毛——沈潛高明，以遂生性。或施牢獄人食，或賑惠貧乏，或捐旛蓋於淨明、金藏二塔。後唐長興二年，眾請於大安國寺後建三學院一所，供待四方聽眾。時又講《華嚴》新經，傳授於崇福寺繼暉法師。由是三年不出院門，一字一禮《華嚴經》一遍，字字禮大佛名經，共一百二十卷。復煉一指，前後計然五指。時晉高祖潛躍晉陽，最多欽重。洎乎龍飛，塵每入洛京朝覲，必延內殿從容，錫賚頗豐。帝賜紫服并懿號，固讓方俞。塵聞鳳翔府法門寺有佛中指骨節真身，乃辭帝往岐陽瞻禮，覩其希奇，又然一指。塵之雙手唯存二指耳。續於天柱寺，就楚倫法師學《俱舍論》。方經數日，微有疾生，至七月二十七日辰時枕肱而逝，俗年六十三，臘四十四。平常唯衣大布，不蓄盈長。六時禮佛，未曾少缺。隴坻之間聞其示滅，黑白二眾具威儀送焚之，得舍利數百粒。弟子以靈骨歸于太原，晉祖勅葬于晉水之西山，小塔至今存焉。

Śramaṇa Xichen, surnamed Yang, was a native of Bingzhou. His father traded goods back and forth, merely seeking profit. His mother once dreamed of a person magnificently attired who asked to spend the night, whereupon she felt herself pregnant. At birth he was extraordinary, and as a child he stood apart from the crowd. Whenever he heard the sounds of bells and chanting, he focused his mind and leaned his ear to listen. When he was just twelve, because of a dream in which a golden man of marvelous appearance led him into a monastery, the next morning he announced to his parents his earnest wish to leave household life (pravrajyā). Before they consented, he wept and refused to eat. Pitying his innate disposition and unable to bear thwarting his feelings, his parents yielded and complied. He immediately went to the Caotang Cloister, following a master to recite the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa-sūtra and the Bodhisattva Precepts, staying awake until dawn. Within nearly a full year, he put aside the text and recited it entirely by heart. When he was seventeen, he attended lectures on the Vimalakīrti-sūtra and grasped its general meaning. Upon coming of age, he completed the highest grade of precepts (upasampadā), upholding the rules of the vinaya without ever a flaw. At twenty-three, thoroughly penetrating the texts and doctrines, he received transmission at the Chongfu Temple in the excellent assembly of Master Zonggan. He also studied Hetuvidyā and Vijñaptimātra, expounding them without defect, and several of his students stood out brilliantly. Master Biancai Congshi of Chongfu Temple was the foremost of his senior disciples. In the second year of Tianyou, when the Li clan held Hedong, Emperor Wu invited him to reside in the Pure Land Cloister of Da'an Temple, offering him the four requisites. He devoted himself to perusing the Tripiṭaka, cultivating the karma for rebirth above, and hosting great non-obstruction vegetarian feasts, five times in total. Chen once offered his body to feed wolves and tigers, entering a mountain valley, but when the beasts approached and sniffed him, they ran away. He also went naked in the thickets to feed mosquitoes and horseflies. He then traveled to Mount Yue Temple at Xianyan to nurture the Way and rest his spirit. Having finished reading through the Tripiṭaka, he sponsored a vegetarian feast and burned one finger to express his thanksgiving. That temple had an image of the Holy Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, before which he kept seven lamps burning constantly and made offerings of incense and flowers. Later, invited by various students, he descended the mountain and expounded the great treatises in the city, uninterrupted through the four seasons. Every month he set up bathing facilities; going to rivers and ponds, he threw food to feed the aquatic creatures; using his own dakṣiṇā donations, he repeatedly redeemed birds—allowing those deep in water and high in the air to fulfill their life nature. At times he gave food to prisoners, or gave alms to the poor and destitute, or donated banners and canopies to the two stūpas of Jingming and Jinzang. In the second year of Changxing of the Later Tang, the assembly requested that a Sanxue Cloister be built behind the Great Anguo Temple to host audiences from the four quarters. At that time, he also lectured on the new translation of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, transmitting it to Master Jihui of Chongfu Temple. From then on, for three years he did not step outside the gate of the cloister, making one prostration per character through the entire Avataṃsaka-sūtra once, and making one prostration per character through the Great Buddha-Name Sūtra, comprising a total of one hundred and twenty fascicles. He burned another finger; in all, he burned five fingers. When Emperor Gaozu of the Jin was still hidden before his rise in Jinyang, he respected him most deeply. Once he ascended the throne, whenever Chen entered the capital of Luoyang for an audience, the emperor always invited him into the inner palace to converse leisurely and bestowed bountiful rewards upon him. The emperor conferred upon him a purple robe and an honorific title, which Chen firmly declined before finally consenting. Hearing that Fameng Temple in Fengxiang Prefecture possessed a genuine bodily relic of the Buddha's middle finger bone, Chen took leave of the emperor to go to Qiyang to view and pay homage; seeing its wondrous rarity, he burned yet another finger. Of Chen's two hands, only two fingers remained. Next, at Tianzhu Temple, he studied the Abhidharmakośa-śāstra under Master Chulun. After just a few days, a slight illness arose; on the twenty-seventh day of the seventh month, at the chen hour, he rested his head on his arm and passed away, at a secular age of sixty-three and a saṅgha age of forty-four. Usually he wore only coarse cloth, never hoarding any excess. Six times a day he paid homage to the Buddha, never missing an occasion. When the region of Longdi heard of his passing into extinction, both monastic and lay communities, fully equipped with ritual dignity, escorted him for cremation, obtaining several hundred śarīra relics. His disciples carried his sacred bones back to Taiyuan, and Emperor Gaozu of the Jin decreed his burial on the western mountain of the Jin River, where a small stūpa remains to this day.