神僧傳 6.18

6.18

As for Shide, Chan Master Fenggan once walked in the mountains beside the road of Chicheng and heard a child crying. He searched and found a boy of about several years old. At first, he thought he was a cowherd boy, but upon detailed questioning about his origins, [the boy] said he had no home and was an orphan abandoned here. Fenggan brought him to Guoqing Monastery and handed him over to the monk who served as rector, saying: "If someone comes to claim him, you may return him." Later, the śramaṇa Lingyi took him under his care and ordered him to oversee the incense, lamps, and dining hall. One day, [Lingyi] suddenly saw him ascend the seat, sit facing the statue at the table, and eat. He further called out to Kauṇḍinya: "Voice-hearer of small fruition!" and, behaving as if no one else were present, held his chopsticks and laughed aloud. The monks then drove him away. Lingyi consulted the elders and dismissed him from his duties in the hall, instead having him wash utensils in the kitchen. As soon as washing was done, he filtered out the food scraps and kept them in bamboo tubes; whenever Hanshan came, he would certainly carry them away. Moreover, the food offered daily by the monks' kitchen to the shrine of the monastery's guardian deity was repeatedly plundered in disarray by crows and birds. Shide struck the clay idol two or three times with a stick and scolded it: "You cannot even protect your own food; how can you protect the saṅghārāma?" That night, the deity appeared in a dream to all the monks of the monastery, saying: "Shide beat me." The next day, when the monks related their dreams, they all tallied. The entire monastery was stirred, and they only then realized he was no ordinary person. At that time, a report was sent to the prefecture and county, and the commandery issued an official reply: "A worthy living in seclusion, an accommodated body of a bodhisattva; he should be honored." Thus they called Shide a "Worthy". Furthermore, when he pastured oxen on the monastery estate, he would sing and call out to Heaven. When the monastery monks were holding the poṣadha, Shide drove the oxen before the hall where the monks were assembled, leaned against the door, clapped his hands, and laughed aloud: "Those aimless fellows are gathering their heads!" At that time, the senior seat who held the Vinaya snapped: "Why does a madman noisily disrupt the recitation of the precepts?" Shide said: "I am not herding cattle; this herd of cattle is mostly those who managed affairs for the monks in this monastery." Shide called out the Dharma-names of the deceased monks one by one, and the oxen each passed by in response to their names. The entire assembly was stunned and bewildered, and all thought of reforming their past and cultivating the future, moved by the bodhisattva who manifested his traces to deliver them. At that time, when Daoqiao was compiling and recording Hanshan's verses and words, he saw Shide's gāthās on the wall of the monastery's earth-god shrine and appended them to the Hanshan collection.