神僧傳 7.15

7.15

Tongxuan, whose secular surname was Li, was a native of the northeast of Taiyuan. His movements and demeanor were immeasurable. He was over seven feet tall, with a purplish complexion and eyebrows that extended past his eyes. His mustache and sideburns were like a painting, his hair was dark blue and curled into spirals, his lips were red and moist, and his teeth were closely set. He wore a birch-bark hat and coarse cloth garments made in the broad-sleeved Confucian style, without a belt around his waist or shoes on his feet. In winter he had no affliction of chapped skin, and in summer he was untouched by dirt or sweat. Unrestrained and self-composed, he was bound by nothing. Thoroughly versed in antiquity and the present, he had penetrated the subtleties of both Confucianism and Buddhism. When he spoke, his voice resonated like the tolling of a great bell. Devoting his heart to the Huayan [Avataṃsaka], he never set it aside. In the spring of the seventh year of the Kaiyuan era, carrying the new Avataṃsaka Sūtra and leaning on a walking staff, he traveled from Dingxiang to the southwest of Yu County in Bingbu, stopping at the house of Gao Shannu in Daxian Village of Tongying Township. There, in a side room, he composed a commentary expounding the Avataṃsaka, not stepping outside the courtyard for nearly three years. Gao and his neighbors found him strange and unfathomable. Each day he ate only ten dates and one cypress-leaf cake, requiring nothing else. Later, he moved to the side of an old Buddha hall belonging to the Ma family in the southern valley, where he built a small earthen hut and dwelt at leisure to rest. The Gao family continued to supply him with dates and cakes. He once carried his commentary along with the sūtra to the estate of the Han family. On the way he encountered a tiger; Tongxuan patted its back and loaded the scriptures and commentary he carried onto it, carrying them away to an earthen grotto, the tiger walking ahead with ears flattened. That place had no spring from which to draw water, but it happened that a violent storm uprooted an old pine more than a hundred feet away, forming a pool about ten feet deep with sweet and fragrant water. To this day it is called the Elder's Spring. Whenever there was a drought, villagers often went there to pray for rain, and their prayers were frequently answered. Moreover, while he was composing the commentary, there were neither candles nor lamp oil in the room; each night as he held his brush, white light over a foot long emanated from both corners of his mouth, shining brightly and illuminating the room as a constant occurrence. From the time he arrived at the earthen grotto, two maidens of blooming beauty and refined elegance suddenly appeared, each day bringing a box of food to the front of the grotto; after Tongxuan had eaten, they cleared the vessels and departed. This continued for five years, during which paper and ink were also supplied without lack. Once the commentary was completed, they vanished without a trace. The commentary he composed was in forty fascicles, comprehensively summarising the text and meaning of the eighty-fascicle sūtra; he followed this with the *Treatise Resolving Doubts* (*Jueyi lun*) in four fascicles. One day, while the local villagers were gathered drinking, Tongxuan came and said to them: 'Take care, all of you; I am now departing.' The villagers were startled and puzzled, thinking he was traveling elsewhere, but he said: 'I am dying.' They all wept with longing and affection and escorted him to the earthen grotto. He said: 'Coming and going are constant.' As the villagers walked down the slope and looked back toward the place, clouds and mist shrouded it in darkness. At the hour of zi, he passed away sitting upright within the grotto, a white light issuing from his crown and piercing up into the great void. This was on the twenty-eighth day of the third month in the eighteenth year of the Kaiyuan era. His age was ninety-six. At daybreak, several men climbed the mountain and saw that his grotto room was completely filled with vipers and serpents, so that no one could advance. They addressed them together with prayers, whereupon the vipers and serpents dispersed. Young and old, moved with remembrance, constructed a litter and bore him to the north of Mount Tai, where they laid stones to build a tomb and buried him. On the day of the burial, two spotted deer, a pair of white cranes, and various kinds of birds and beasts appeared, as if in sorrow and longing.