宋高僧傳 7.8

7.8

Śramaṇa Xuanyue, surnamed Zhang, was a man from Zhengping. His character and disposition were steadfast and pure, and from youth he had harbored the wish to transcend the dust of the world. Having fulfilled his longtime aspiration, he entered the Longxing monastery in his prefecture; reciting a thousand words a day, he never needed to receive instruction a second time. After shaving his head, he fulfilled the rules of discipline, scrutinized his own mind, adhered to the standards of the precepts, and scrupulously maintained prohibitions and observances without ever breaching them. From this his renown and integrity abruptly rose, and his peers looked up to him. Within a few years, he was richly versed in both vinaya and treatises, and he sought out good friends everywhere to investigate profound texts. He arrived at Chengsheng Temple in Chang'an, where, selected for his preceptual virtue, he participated on the ordination platform; he lectured on the vinaya and the Abhidharmakośa more than forty times in all, deepening and quieting his nature, investigating with unflagging rigor. He authored the Jinhua chao on the Abhidharmakośa-śāstra in twenty scrolls, which was valued by contemporaries. When he mounted the platform for the two lecture series, about three hundred people would attend, all facing north to receive his instruction. He transmitted the teaching to about a hundred disciples; scholars rushed to and fro throughout the Fen and Qin river regions until his old age. He died in a small room of his own cloister, at seventy-six years of secular age and fifty-six years of saṅgha age. His monastic and lay disciples collected several hundred grains of relics from the cremation pit and erected a brick pagoda to the west of the commandery city.