大明高僧傳 6.4

6.4

Shi Faning was styled Mount Mayi because he resided on Mount Mayi in Yizhou. He was a son of the Li family of Ju County in Eastern Mizhou. At first he was ordained under Master Tianning Miaokong Ming of Yizhou. Having attended and served him for a long time, he fully grasped the essentials of Yunmen. Emerging into the world, he resided at Jingju Temple in Yi, greatly propagating the way of Xuedou. During the Shaoxing era, he arrived at Qinglong in Huating. Lady Gao, mother of the military supervisory judge Zhang Gun, dreamt of a deva who told her, "An ancient Buddha is coming." The next day the master arrived. They welcomed him to stay in the Qian family garden, where an hermitage was built. Excavating the ground, they found iron chimes, broken stelae, and Buddha images in resonance with the event. Thereupon the magistrate of Huating, Liu Yue, memorialized to establish the monastery, which was granted the plaque "Jingju". Because he visited Master Ming at Xuedou in Mingzhou, the prefectural governor Mo Jiang invited him to preside over Jixiang. In the Yuanfu era of Emperor Zhezong, there was an hermitage on Mount She called Lingfeng; a ministry warrant changed its name to Zhaoqing Chan Cloister. The Right Vice Director Zhu E invited the master to be its founding patriarch. Before long he was transferred to Guanghui in Mingzhou, and then returned to Zhaoqing. On the eighth day of the first month in the twenty-sixth year of Shaoxing, a bingzi year, he bathed, sat upright, expounded the Dharma, took leave of the assembly, and entered quiescence. His worldly age was seventy-six; his dharma age was fifty-nine. His whole body was stupaed in the eastern corner of the temple.