神僧傳 6.28

6.28

Śramaṇa Farong had the secular surname Wei and was a native of Yanling in Runzhou. At the age of nineteen, he entered Maoshan, where he relied upon Master of Dharma Jiong, had his head shaved, served diligently, and requested instruction in the Way. In the seventeenth year of Zhenguan, he established a separate thatched meditation hut below the northern cliff of Youqi Monastery on Mount Niutou. Day and night he contemplated and discerned without wasting an inch of shadow. On the mountain was a stone chamber about ten paces deep; Farong sat within it. Suddenly a divine serpent more than a zhang in length appeared, with eyes like sparks of starlight, raising its head and flaunting its might. It spent the night at the entrance of the chamber, but seeing that Farong remained unmoved, it went away. He thereupon dwelt there for a hundred days. The mountain had always had many tigers, and firewood gatherers had ceased to go there; after Farong entered, people came and went without hindrance. Furthermore, herds of deer were moved to rely on his chamber, listening submissively without ever showing an expression of fear. Two large deer came directly inside, listening to the Dharma with the community of monks for three years before departing. The foundation of the kitchen where he lived bordered a great gorge; as for surging water, none could ascend the steps. He then paced back and forth, pointed to the eastern ridge, and said: "Anciently, Master Yuan leaned his tin staff, causing the rotten steps to stir a spring. If this place can be dwelt in, a clear spring will surely overflow of itself." After one night, a cascading spring suddenly welled up on the eastern ridge, clear, pure, sweet, and delicious, warm in winter and cold in summer; he thereupon channeled and guided it up the peak, leading it to the cauldrons and through the corridors. Furthermore, in the eleventh month of the twenty-first year, he lectured on the Lotus Sūtra beneath the cliff. At that time, white snow filled the steps, yet the flow of Dharma never ceased. From within the frozen ice, he obtained two stalks of flowers resembling lotuses, radiant like golden color; after seven days, they suddenly disappeared. In the third year of Yonghui, the county magistrate invited him to come out to Jianchu to expound the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra. A monastic assembly of a thousand gathered; when he reached the chapter on Settling Disputes, Farong gave free rein to his natural eloquence, evaluating the principles and meanings. Suddenly the earth shook violently, and the listening assembly was thrown into a surge of alarm. The bells, chiming stones, and incense-tables all swayed and shook, while monastics and laypeople outside the monastery remained calm and unaware. In the first year of Xianqing, Administrator of Public Works Xiao Yuanshan repeatedly invited him to stay at Jianchu. Farong said to the monks: "Once I depart now, there will be no time for me to tread here again. The way of parting and meeting is merely the common rule." He declined, but was not excused, and so went out through the monastery gate. The birds and beasts wailed sorrowfully without ceasing for over a month. The mountain streams and spring pools beat upon stones and welled with sand, suddenly filled to the brim. The four large paulownia trees in front of his chamber, luxuriant in the fifth month, withered completely in a single morning. On the twenty-third day of the intercalary first month in the second year, he died at Jianchu. His worldly age was sixty-four.