神僧傳 9.45

9.45

Śramaṇa Zhihui was a man of Xianqin whose secular surname was Gao. When he was a young child, whenever he went to a vihāra he would stay as if it were his home. Chan Master Wen of Guifeng saw him, marveled at him, and shaved his head. At the age of twenty, he received the full precepts. He served Chan Master Benren of Baishui in Gao'an for ten years, and then returned to the Western Capital. Delighting in the fine mountains and waters of Zhongtan, he built a dwelling to reside in, calling it the Warm Room Cloister. He made it his daily practice to give water and provide medicine. No one could fathom his depth. In the fifth year of the Kaiping reign era of the Liang dynasty, he suddenly wished to go to Mount Guifeng. Light and carefree, he ventured deep into the mountains and sat among the crags and boulders as if in his ordinary sleeping quarters. Looking around, he saw a patched robe, recitation beads, a bronze vessel, and a palm-bark hat hidden among the stone cliffs; when touched, they immediately crumbled. Closing his eyes for a long while, he said, "These are the implements of my former life." Thereupon he founded a monastery on that site to fulfill his former aspiration. Just as the grass was being cleared, auspicious clouds emerged from among the peaks; hence it was named Chongyun. Tigers and leopards retreated and left. There was a dragon pool so treacherous that none dared approach it. Zhihui directed the laborers to level and fill it to make a road. The dragon thus moved elsewhere; one saw only clouds and thunder following it. Later, Emperor Mingzong of the Later Tang heard of this and praised it, bestowing the placard reading "Changxing." He served as abbot for more than forty years. When Military Commissioner Wang Yanchao was still obscure, he once traveled with Zhihui and wished to become a śramaṇa. Zhihui gazed intently at him and said, "Your secular karmic connections are deep; you shall serve as the protective wall for our house." Yanchao later indeed garrisoned Yongxing and showed him the etiquette of a disciple. In the summer of the third year of the Xiande reign era of the Zhou dynasty, Zhihui went to Yongxing to take leave of Yanchao and entrusted him with the protection of the Dharma. Yanchao wept and said, "Can you truly bear to abandon your disciple, sir?" Zhihui smiled and said, "Even if we were granted a thousand years, it would still end in parting." On the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month, he wrote a gāthā, then sat cross-legged and passed away. He lived for eighty-four years and saw sixty-four rains retreats. Earlier, when Zhihui resided at Zhongtan, there was a sick bhikṣu whom the assembly despised and abandoned. The bhikṣu lamented, "Because of past karma, I suffer from white leprosy. Could you, Master, wash and rub me?" Zhihui did so without any reluctance on his face. Suddenly there was a divine light and a marvelous fragrance. Just as he marveled at it, [the sick monk] was suddenly gone. Returning to look at the scabs of the sores, they too all possessed a marvelous fragrance.