神僧傳 4.29

4.29

Lu Fahe: it is not known where he was from. He lived in seclusion on Baili Isle in Jiangling. His clothing, food, and dwelling were entirely the same as those of a śramaṇa observing the precepts. Elders had seen him since their youth, and his countenance was ever unchanging; no one could fathom him. Some said he came from Mount Songgao and traveled far and wide. After entering Wenyang commandery in Jingzhou, he resided at Mount Zishi in Gaoyao county. Without any apparent reason, he abandoned the mountain where he lived, and soon after there was the rebellion of the Man barbarian rebel Wen Daoqi. People of the time thought he had foreseen the signs beforehand. When Hou Jing first announced his surrender to the Liang, Fahe said to Zhu Yuanying of Nanjun, "This poor monk shall go with you, dānapati, to attack Hou Jing." Yuanying said, "Hou Jing has performed meritorious service for the state. Why do you say we should attack him, Master?" Fahe said, "It is simply as it is." When Hou Jing crossed the Yangtze River, Fahe was at Mount Qingxi. Yuanying went to ask him, "Hou Jing is now besieging the city; how will the matter turn out?" Fahe said, "When ordinary men pick fruit, they ought to wait until it is ripe." When pressed with questions, he said, "He will conquer, and yet he will not conquer." Hou Jing sent his general Ren Yue to attack Xiao Yi, the Prince of Xiangdong of the Liang, at Jiangling. Fahe then went to the Prince of Xiangdong to request permission to campaign against Ren Yue. He summoned eight hundred Man barbarian disciples to the river ferry. In two days they set out. The Prince of Xiangdong sent Hu Sengyou leading over a thousand men to march with him. Fahe boarded the warship and laughed loudly, saying, "Countless soldiers and horses!" Jiangling had many spirit shrines where commoners constantly prayed; from the moment Fahe's army set out, not a single one had any efficacy left. People thought this was because all the spirits had followed him on the march. Reaching Lake Chasha, he faced Ren Yue. Fahe rode in a light boat without armor or helmet, floating downstream to within one li of Yue's army. He then returned and said to his generals and soldiers, "I merely observed that their dragon is asleep and motionless, while our army's dragon is leaping with great vigor. Attack them at once! If we can engage them tomorrow, we will rout the rebels without losing a single man from among either guests or hosts. Yet there is a hazardous spot." Thereupon fire-ships were launched, but the headwind was unfavorable. Fahe held a white feather fan and waved it at the wind; the wind immediately reversed direction toward Ren Yue. All of Ren Yue's host saw the Liang soldiers walking on the water. Thereupon they suffered a great collapse, and all threw themselves into the water. Ren Yue fled and went into hiding, and no one knew where he had gone. Fahe said, "He will be captured tomorrow at noon." When the time arrived and he had not yet been caught, people questioned him. Fahe said, "Earlier, when the water on this isle was dry, I erected a pole. I told you dānapatis, 'Although this is a pole, it is actually the rebels' marker.' Now why do you not look beneath the marker for the rebel?" Just as he said, they indeed saw Ren Yue in the water clasping the pole, with his head tilted upward just barely exposing his nose. They then captured him. Yue said, "I beg to die before the Master's eyes." Fahe said, "Dānapati, you have the physiognomy of one who will definitely not die by weapons. Moreover, you have a karmic bond with the Prince; there is definitely no other worry. The Prince will later obtain your assistance, dānapati." The Prince of Xiangdong indeed released him and appointed him a commandery governor. When Western Wei besieged Jiangling, Yue rushed to its relief with troops and fought valiantly. Having subjugated Ren Yue, Fahe went forward to see Wang Sengbian at Baling and said to him, "This poor monk has already broken off one of Hou Jing's arms; what more can he do? Dānapati, you should immediately pursue and capture him." He then requested to return, and said to the Prince of Xiangdong, "Hou Jing will naturally be pacified; he is not worth worrying about. The Shu rebels are about to arrive; this Fahe requests to guard the Wu Gorges to await them." He then gathered the various armies, went there, and transported stones to fill the river; in three days the water ceased to flow. He blocked it across with iron chains. Xiao Ji, Prince of Wuling, indeed sent Shu troops to cross the mouth of the gorges; pressed by circumstances, they could neither advance nor retreat. Wang Lin and Fahe planned the strategy, and in a single battle exterminated them. When the army halted at Baidi, he said to the people, "Zhuge Kongming may truly be called a famous general. I have seen it myself: beside this city there is about one hu of his buried crossbow arrowheads." He then planted a marker and ordered them to dig; it was just as he had said. He also once went beneath a large tree north of the city of Xiangyang, drew a square of two chi on the ground, and ordered his disciples to dig; they found a tortoise a chi and a half long. Tapping it with his staff, he said, "You wished to come out but could not for several hundred years; had you not met me, how could you have seen the light of day?" After he conferred the three refuges upon it, the tortoise entered the grass. Earlier, Mount Badie had many people with virulent illnesses; Fahe gathered herbs for them and treated them, and within three doses all were cured. They immediately requested to become his disciples. In the mountains there were many poisonous insects and fierce beasts; Fahe conferred the prohibitive precepts upon them, and they no longer bit or stung. Wherever he moored on rivers and lakes, he would erect a marker beside the peaks, saying: "Life is liberated at this place." Fishermen would catch nothing; if they happened to catch a little, a great storm of wind and thunder would immediately arise. The boatmen, terrified, would release their catch, and the wind and rain would then subside. In his later years, even though he led troops, he still prohibited the various armies from fishing and hunting; if anyone secretly violated this, in the middle of the night fierce beasts would inevitably come seeking to devour them, or their mooring ropes would be lost. A young disciple playfully cut off a snake's head and came to see Fahe. Fahe said, "Why did you kill it?" and pointed to show him. The disciple then saw the snake's head biting onto the crotch of his trousers and not falling off. Fahe had him repent and make merit for the snake. There was another man who tested a sword on an ox, severing its head with a single stroke, and then came to see Fahe. Fahe said, "There is a headless ox demanding your life with great urgency; if you do not make merit for it, the retribution will arrive within a month." The man did not believe him, and in a few days he indeed died. Fahe also sited residences and examined graves for people to avert misfortune and seek good fortune. He once said to someone, "Do not tie your horse to a mortar." When that man passed through a village, there was a mortar beside a gate, so he tied his horse to its post. Upon entering the gate, he remembered Fahe's admonition; he ran out to untie it, but the horse was already dead. Emperor Yuan of the Liang appointed Fahe as Area Commander, Regional Inspector of Yingzhou, and enfeoffed him as Duke of Jiangcheng County. Fahe did not refer to himself as a subject; above his name with the red seal in his memorials, he called himself a lay practitioner (upāsaka), and later called himself Minister of Works (Situ). Emperor Yuan of the Liang said to his Vice Director of the Left, Wang Bao, "I have never intended to appoint Lu to the Three Excellencies, so why does he style himself thus?" Wang Bao said, "Since he considers himself master of the arts of the Way, it is likely that he has foreknowledge." Because Fahe's merits and achievements were growing increasingly substantial, Emperor Yuan of the Liang thereupon conferred on him the title of Minister of Works, while he remained Area Commander and Regional Inspector as before. His several thousand retainers were all called disciples; he transformed people solely through the arts of the Way, never subjecting them to penal laws or prisons. Furthermore, where marketplaces were arranged, no market directors were established; no one was assigned to handle the laws of pasturage and administration. There were merely empty locked chests along the roads with a single hole cut on top to receive money; merchants and shopkeepers, according to the amount of their goods, calculated their prices and limits and deposited it into the chests themselves. The officials who received and oversaw it unlocked and took it only in the evening, itemized the entries, and delivered them to the treasury. Furthermore, in ordinary times, Fahe spoke as if words could hardly leave his mouth, but whenever he held a discussion, his powerful eloquence was peerless, though still tinged with a Man barbarian accent. He was skilled at offensive warfare. Stationed at Jiangxia, he amassed a great force of warships, intending to launch a surprise attack on Xiangyang and enter the Wu Pass. Emperor Yuan of the Liang sent word to stop him. Fahe said, "I, Fahe, am a seeker of the Buddha; I do not even covet the seat of Śakra, King of the Gods, or Brahmā—how could I plot against the position of the ruler? It is only that at the place of the Void King Buddha, I formed an incense-and-fire karmic bond with His Majesty; seeing that a retribution is due to arrive for the King, I came to his rescue. Now that I am suspected, this karma is fixed and cannot be undone." Thereupon he prepared an offering of food, consisting of large dumplings and thin pancakes. When the Wei mobilized troops, Fahe went from Yingzhou into Hankou, intending to rush to Jiangling. Emperor Yuan of the Liang sent someone to head him off, saying, "We can defeat the rebels ourselves; Master, merely guard Yingzhou, there is no need to move." Fahe then returned to the province, whitewashed the city gates, donned a coarse white cloth robe and trousers with a slanted kerchief, bound his waist with a thick rope, and sat upon a reed mat; only at the end of the day did he remove it. When he heard that Emperor Yuan had been defeated and destroyed, he again took up his former mourning garments, put them on, wept, and received condolences. When the Liang captives entered the Wei, they indeed saw the dumplings and pancakes. Earlier, Fahe built the Shouwang Monastery on Baili Isle; after framing the Buddha hall, he had the beams and pillars cut shorter, saying, "Some forty-odd years from now, the Buddhadharma will suffer a hailstorm; this monastery is secluded and remote, and will be able to escape the calamity." When the Wei pacified Jingzhou, the palaces were burned to ashes; the Commander-in-Chief wished to dismantle and take the Buddha hall of Shouwang Monastery, but disliked that its timbers were too short, so he stopped. Later, when the Northern Zhou suppressed the Buddhadharma, this monastery was separated by the Chen border, and so did not suffer the calamity. In the spring of the sixth year of the Tianbao era, King Yue of Qinghe advanced his army to the Yangtze River; Fahe surrendered the entire province to the Northern Qi. Emperor Wenxuan appointed Fahe as Grand Area Commander of the Military Affairs of Ten Provinces and Grand Commandant; and appointed Song Li, Southwest Grand Area Commander of the Military Affairs of Five Provinces, Regional Inspector of Jingzhou, and Duke of Anxiang Commandery, as Regional Inspector of Yingzhou, with their ranks and peerages as before. Li's younger brother Song Qian was appointed Cavalier Attendant-in-Ordinary, Specially Advanced with the Threefold Protocol, Regional Inspector of Xiangzhou, and Duke of Yixing County. When the Liang general Hou Tian came to press Jiangxia, the Qi army abandoned the city and retreated. Fahe, together with the brothers Song Li and Song Qian, entered the imperial court. Emperor Wenxuan, hearing that he possessed marvelous arts, open-mindedly wished to meet him; he prepared the ceremonial retinue of the Three Excellencies and set up tents twelve li south of the city to await him. Seeing the city of Ye from afar, Fahe dismounted and performed the Pace of Yu. Xin Shu said to him, "Since Your Excellency has pledged allegiance from ten thousand li away and His Majesty treats you with an open mind, why do you perform such arts?" Fahe, holding an incense burner in his hands, walked following the imperial carriage until he reached the guesthouse. The next day he was granted an audience. He was provided with a fully screened carriage veiled with an oiled netting. When he went to the palace to submit his name, he did not mention his official titles or peerage, nor did he call himself a subject, but merely said: "The Lay Practitioner of Mount Jing." Emperor Wenxuan feasted Fahe and his disciples in the Zhaoyang Hall. He bestowed upon Fahe one million cash, ten thousand bolts of textiles, a first-class mansion, one hundred qing of fields, two hundred male and female slaves, and a matching quantity of provisions and utensils. Fahe freed all the slaves he received, saying, "Go each according to your own conditions." The money and silk were distributed in dāna and exhausted in a single day. Using the residence bestowed by the government, he constructed a Buddhist monastery, residing himself in a single room no different from an ordinary person. Within three years, he was twice made Grand Commandant, yet the world still called him a lay practitioner. Without illness, he announced to his disciples the time of his death. When the time arrived, he burned incense, made obeisance to the Buddha, sat upon a rope-strung bed, and passed away. After he was bathed and about to be encoffined, his corpse shrank slightly, measuring only about three chi. Emperor Wenxuan ordered the coffin opened to inspect it; it was merely an empty coffin. Fahe had written on the wall of the room where he lived and then plastered over it; when the plaster peeled away, there was writing that said: "A Son of Heaven for ten years is still passable; a Son of Heaven for a hundred days is urgent as fire; Sons of Heaven for a full year sit successively on the throne." It also said: "One mother gives birth to three heavens; two heavens share five years." Commentators took this to mean that Empress Dowager Lou gave birth to three Sons of Heaven, and from Emperor Xiaozhao's accession to Emperor Wucheng's abdication of the throne, together with the Latter Master, it was five years in all.