宋高僧傳 26.14

26.14

Śramaṇa Xuanlan, whose secular surname was Chu, had ancestors from Henan. His family received sustenance in Qiantang and consequently settled there. Xuanlan was endowed with illustrious virtue, possessed spontaneous understanding from birth, and profoundly penetrated the true mark of phenomena so as to venerate the root of goodness. From his first thought of leaving home until he departed householder life, he took Huichang as his master. Master Chang's virtue was completely fulfilled and his abilities were fully sufficient; advanced in years and honored in conduct, he had long served as a model for others. When he saw that Xuanlan did not depart from benevolence for even a single breath, he told his disciples: 'The unsurpassed path takes purity as its basis. If someone can apply his mind for a single thought-moment, I have yet to see his learning fall short. It has been long since Jiangbiao had a true monk; might this boy become the Dharma drum, making it heard far and wide?' Such was the extraordinary discernment granted him in advance by an accomplished master. In his home county there was the old Huayan Temple; because this plot of mulberry trees was close to the ancestral grave of Master Xuanli, and under the decline of the Sui house the Dharma sanctuary had deteriorated, its name on the verge of vanishing into valleys and its traces constantly falling into disuse. At the beginning of the Tang, Xuanlan solicited faithful people to rebuild it. In the Wenming year, an imperial edict permitted the restoration of its former plaque, while the measurements and scale were expanded and its site was relocated. Backed by mountains and facing water, its terrain was splendid in both directions. Xuanlan first relied on Tianzhu Temple upon receiving the full precepts, then resided in Yixianju as a saṅgha rectifier, and later presided over Huayan Temple as a senior of eminent virtue. The three temples successively led to the same Path; the Path is present everywhere, changing in accordance with teaching. Xuanlan always took compassionate salvation of living beings as his personal duty, and thus proposed turning the open waters of the flat lake in front of the temple into a life-release pond. At that time, Prefect Yuan Congli was encouraged by this, deeply entered the gate of compassion, and prohibited fishing for six li. Sima Yang Minyan was inspired by a dream and extended it to ten li. As a result, fishes with raising fins and swishing tails, breathing at the surface and sinking, feared no harm and were able to fulfill their living nature. Xuanlan also considered scriptures and images paramount: before the hall he had four images painted, with Maitreya as the chief; he had three hundred and fifty bronze images cast, with Amitābha as the chief; and he had over two thousand scrolls of scriptures transcribed, with the gold-lettered Nirvāṇa Sūtra as the chief. For such merit, he received corresponding visible retribution in the present—his deceased father Zong was posthumously promoted to Prefect of Hezhou; his elder brother Wuliang was Right Policy Advisor and Duke of the State of Shu. During the days when Wuliang was pursuing his studies, a dragon appeared in Linping Lake, and everyone went out to look, but the Duke of Shu remained serene without leaving his desk; such was his caliber. In the early years of Emperor Xuanzong, the Duke of Shu served as an attendant lecturer, and the Emperor praised him. When he returned to visit his mother, who was already a centenarian, all the brothers had gray hair; in their morning and evening gatherings, they spoke of nothing but the Dharma. In the twenty-second year of Kaiyuan, Xuanlan manifested illness and passed away at the temple he built in Linping, at the age of eighty-four. The monks Mingliao, Dajue, Puxian, Shenman, and Huaixun, all participating in the lineage of the Dharma, bore his ritual implements and entombed them beneath the Xili Cave. Xu Anzhen, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Works, composed a stele inscription praising his virtue. Also, Śramaṇa Shouru of Aitong Temple in Minzhong frequently exhorted and guided people, and the folk of Yue gathered to him like crowds in a marketplace. He erected quiet abodes to aid the multitude, urgently prioritizing the benefit of others. In the tenth year of Kaiyuan, he constructed a bathhouse at the temple; distressed that the terrain was steep and high while the clear spring was far below, so that shadoofs were useless and fetching water from a distance was an enduring hardship, his thoughts could find no way to alter the design. Suddenly one night, the lower stream ran dry, and more than twenty paces from where the bathhouse was being built, a clear spring gushed forth; people at the time said spiritual power had operated invisibly to move this spring. None of the people of the Seven Min failed to embrace the faith. He passed away in a side room of the bathhouse.