宋高僧傳 5.23

5.23

Shi Faxin had the surname Sun. At first, his mother dreamed of swallowing a bright pearl, whereupon she rejected fish and abhorred all pungent foods. When the month of his birth was fulfilled, he was born with extraordinary signs. At fifteen, he took leave of his parents to follow a master, and received full ordination according to the canonical age. In him conduct and learning were united, making him prominent as a leader of the teaching; he surpassed the achievements of Yi Yin and Lü Shang in establishing merit, and considered the self-indulgent leisurely retreats of the Four Whiteheads of Mount Shang to be vulgar. Forgetting the body and identifying with the true nature, he made companions of the mountain trees. Grand Master Enzhen of Gudi entrusted him with the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, the Bodhisattva Precepts, and the Awakening of Faith; his mind was polished by tranquility, and his wisdom merged with the scripture. One night, he dreamed of boarding a great ship that cut straight across the vast ocean; a mountain stretched across his path, its height reaching to the heavens. Suddenly, his solitary sail soared like a kite, floating upward across the waters; the peaks abruptly towered high, while clouds billowed below. Upon waking, his body felt as light as discarded clothing, and he roused refreshed amid streaming sweat. From then on, the meanings of sentences came to him without thinking; the entire text of the sūtra constantly manifested in his mind's mirror, and the principle of 'unhindered interpenetration among phenomena' was grasped as effortlessly as stringing flowers. In the sixth year of the Tianbao era, he painted an image of Rocana at Changle Temple in Suzhou to transform and instruct the various classes of beings. In the second year of the Dali era, when he was lecturing at Longxing Temple in Changzhou, no sooner had he mounted the Dharma seat than an extraordinary light suddenly appeared like trailing red threads, gradually brightening and expanding, swirling into the boundless sky. Longtime practitioners in the assembly were the first to behold it. Over time, he lectured on the great sūtra ten times and composed twelve rolls of Ritual Records. On the seventh day of the eleventh month of the thirteenth year of the Dali era, the śramaṇa Huijue dreamed that a giant stūpa sank two tiers into the earth. Before long, Faxin manifested illness and passed away, at the age of sixty-one, with forty-two years of dharma age. His disciple who received the Dharma, Taichu, was entrusted with the incense burner and conversational fly-whisk; Zhengjue of Xunyang and Shenxiu of Kuaiji were to him what Ziyou and Zixia were to the Ruists. When Faxin first lectured at Tianzhu Temple, he grandly expounded the Avataṃsaka. At that time, the monk Chengguan of Yue attended his seat to resolve doubts and deeply attained its profound meaning. After his death, Jiaoran of Wuxing composed an epitaph stele, and Lord Su of Hancheng composed a eulogy, joining together to extol his virtues.