宋高僧傳 30.42

30.42

釋宗淵，姓宮氏，高密人也。幼通經籍，察慧若神，忽願出家于東萊北禪院。後參學江表岳中祖師勝友，資神潤己，往造實歸。僻好吟詩，於荊楚間甞師學于齊己之體，自言緣情在品物流形之外。覽天下山川，且曰「步仞之丘，巨獸無以隱其軀」。愛宜陽柏閣山居之，以求其志。其孤潔耿介，凡俗不可造次而見。日別持觀音支品，蓋曾有善相人言淵促齡，勉令受持普門品也。至太平興國五年十月，預言終期，令木工作座，如鹿頂形。連促木工，明日齋時要用，至是果坐終焉。鄉人無遠近皆來焚香設拜，當年遷小塔于寶雲寺之山原，年八十三。有洛西集。著挽辭五十首，一云：「舉世應無百歲人，百年終作塚中塵。余今八十有三也，自作哀歌送此身。」紙衣一襲葬焉。後開發，神色宛然，弟子淡然、奉明葬之于巖穴之中矣。

Śramaṇa Zongyuan, whose secular surname was Gong, was a native of Gaomi. In his youth he was well versed in the classics and commentaries, with discernment and wisdom like a spirit; suddenly he resolved to leave home at the North Chan Cloister in Donglai. Later he traveled to study with patriarchs and excellent friends across the Yangtze and in the sacred peaks, nourishing his spirit and enriching himself, advancing his attainments before returning home. He was passionately fond of composing poetry, and in the Jingchu region he once studied the style of Qiji, saying of himself that his emotions lodged beyond the physical shapes of things. Surveying the mountains and rivers of the realm, he remarked, 'On a hill of a few paces and fathoms, a great beast cannot conceal its body.' He grew fond of Mount Bogao in Yiyang and dwelt there to pursue his aspirations. In his solitary purity and unbending integrity, ordinary folks could not casually gain an audience with him. Daily he recited an individual chapter of Avalokiteśvara, for a skilled physiognomist had once told Zongyuan that his lifespan would be brief, urging him to accept and uphold the 'Universal Gate Chapter.' In the tenth month of the fifth year of Taiping Xingguo (980 CE), he predicted the time of his death and ordered a carpenter to make a seat in the shape of a deer's crown. Repeatedly pressing the carpenter, saying he would need it at tomorrow's mealtime, when the time arrived he indeed died sitting upright. Local people from near and far all came to burn incense and bow in homage; that year they moved his small stupa to the mountain plateau of Baoyun Temple, at the age of eighty-three. He left the Luoxi ji (Collection of West of Luoyang). He composed fifty funerary elegies, one of which read: 'In this entire world there are surely no hundred-year-old men, / After a hundred years one ends up dust within the tomb. / I am now eighty-three, / And compose my own lament to send this body off.' He was buried in a single suite of paper garments. Later, when the grave was opened, his spiritual countenance was just as in life; his disciples Danran and Fengming reinterred him within a rock cave.