神僧傳 8.34

8.34

Shi Chengguan, whose surname was Xiahou, was a native of Shanyin in Yuezhou. When he was just eleven years old, he renounced household life under Chan Master Pei at Baolin Monastery and chanted the *Lotus Sūtra*. At fourteen he received an imperial grace permitting his ordination, and was subsequently registered at this monastery. Chengguan was brilliant, lofty, and unfettered, impossible to constrain with petty matters. Later, when he was about to compose a commentary on the *Avataṃsaka-sūtra*, between waking and sleeping he saw a golden man standing tall directly facing the sun; [Chengguan] welcomed and embraced him with his hands, and before long chewed and swallowed him entirely. Upon awakening, sweat poured from him, and he rejoiced at this omen of having ingested the light that shines everywhere. Beginning in the first month of the first year of Xingyuan, he completed his labor in the twelfth month of the third year of Zhenyuan, producing twenty scrolls. He then provided a meal for a thousand monks to inaugurate the commentary. At that time, a lotus flower with five joined stalks sprouted in the pond before the hall, each stalk having three nodes; everyone was amazed and admiring. Chengguan frequently pondered the transmission [of the teaching]. Suddenly one night he dreamt that his body transformed into a dragon, lifting its head at the Southern Terrace and coiling its tail at the northern mountains, claws stretching across the azure sky, its scales and mane shining against the sun; in a moment it wound along and transformed into thousands of small dragons, soaring into the blue vault and dispersing away. This was indeed a figure for the branching and widespread dissemination of the doctrinal teachings. He then took up residence at Xiyan Monastery on Mount Zhongtiao. At the monastery there was a Chan mendicant with knitted brows and shorn hair, whose style name was the Madman. Dressed in short coarse garments and holding a long staff, he sang madly and uttered confused words; yet whatever he pointed to or criticized mostly proved true. Before Chengguan arrived, the mad monk drove the monks to sprinkle and sweep, saying: "Soon a bodhisattva will arrive here." Chengguan showed his passing during the Yuanhe reign, at the age of over seventy.