神僧傳 9.55

9.55

Śramaṇa Wuxin was surnamed Wang and was a native of Qujiang in Shaozhou. He was imposing and dark-faced, resembling an Indian monk. Relying on Fotuo Cloister, he shaved his head. With moral courage surpassing the crowd, he liked to rebuke people to their faces. He first resided at Yunyan, and soon moved to Cuiyan. Formerly, there had been an improper shrine there; the local villagers held sacrificial purifications with wine and meat, spreading filth without a day's pause. Xin instructed the administrator to destroy it, but the administrator declined, not daring to invite disaster. Xin said angrily, "If it can cause disaster, I shall bear it myself!" He then personally destroyed it. Soon, a giant python coiled within his bedchamber, lifting its head as if to swallow him. Xin shouted at it, and it fled. He slept peacefully without incident. Before long, he again oversaw Yunyan and built a sūtra repository. Grand Scribe Lord Huang Tingjian composed an inscription for it. Someone carved an epitaph for his own parent on the back of the stele. Xin said in furious anger, "To commit such an insult without fearing disaster, like this!" Before he had finished speaking, a divine light overturned the roof, and a thunderbolt entered through the door, splitting the back of the stele right down the middle; looking at it, it had already turned to ashes, while the repository inscription remained safe and undamaged. In his late years, he returned to reside at Huanglong, and students gathered like clouds. Falling ill, he retired to live at Huitang. On the fifteenth day of the twelfth month in the fifth year of the Zhenghe reign era, he peacefully passed away. When the obituary was heard, the patched-robe monks of the various directions wept and shed tears. Cremating him yielded five-colored relics. He lived for seventy-two years and saw forty-five rains retreats. A stūpa was built for him behind Huitang.