弘贊法華傳 8.34

8.34

There was a bhikṣuṇī whose name has been lost. She lived within the borders of Kunshan County in Suzhou. Having entered the Way in her youth, she constantly recited the Lotus Sūtra twice each day for over twenty years. Her appearance was graceful and composed, so that all who saw her felt affection and longing for her. In the first year of the Yongchang reign era, the county recording officer, surnamed Zhu, conceived evil thoughts and made unseemly demands upon her. The nun's noble resolve was steadfast and upright, and she refused to yield to him. Zhu then harassed and disrupted the monastic assembly, damaging the permanent property of the temple. The nuns did not know by what means they might escape this misery. The sūtra-reciting nun said, "How could this Lotus Sūtra be without miraculous efficacy?" She immediately put on clean clothes, entered the Buddha hall, burned incense, and made a vow. After this, the recording officer, using another matter as a pretext, came to lodge overnight with illicit intentions, intending just then to head toward the nun's quarters. In a brief moment, he suddenly felt aching pain in half of his body, whereupon his male organ fell off. Sweat poured over his entire body, and leprosy sores immediately erupted; his eyebrows, beard, and sideburns all fell out at once. The recording officer grieved and repented in a hundred ways, but in the end he was never cured.