弘贊法華傳 7.22

7.22

Shi Huibin, whose secular surname was Hu, left home [to become a monk] and resided at the Chanju Daochang in Yuzhang Commandery. Later he served Tiantai Zhiyi as his master, having earnestly prayed to leave home. He ate vegetables and observed constant fasting, enduring extraordinary hardship and austerity. He lived in seclusion in the Yue Mountains, cutting himself off from worldly contacts, and recited the Lotus Sūtra. When he finished reciting the sūtra for the first time, he promptly burned the fourth finger of his left hand as an offering. He kept a daily quota of three recitations in this manner. From then on, over the course of many years, there was always an extraordinary fragrance perfuming his room, and the sound of snapping fingers was heard, deeply moving his neighbors. In the eighth month of the eighth year of the Daye reign era (612 CE), he gave up his life at the age of forty-four. Before he died, he personally beheld a divine being manifesting a form several zhang tall, who bowed in veneration to him, praising the merit of upholding the sūtra, and then said, "The Dharma Master is about to depart; I personally wish to accompany and attend you." Moreover, the temple monk Zhihai, who was a true practitioner, dreamed that the Dharma Master said, "I am now to be born in Tuṣita Heaven. As there is no means for us to meet and serve [together], I bid you farewell here." He earnestly exhorted and instructed Zhihai to practice the Way alongside others. After Huibin died, his body grew large, twice its normal size. When shrouded in his old robes, they covered only one third of it. Clergy and laity alike were astonished, none comprehending the reason. In his final testamentary instructions, he ordered that his body be donated [as food] to sentient beings. His fellow student, the monk Sengyi, helped fulfill his wish, collected his bones, and erected a square tumulus at the place of the śītavana on the cliff of Hongjing.