天台九祖傳 1.2

1.2

The nine generations of patriarchs of our lineage manifested their births across both the Eastern and Western lands. Appearing and flourishing before and after one another, they were separated by vast stretches of time and distance; consequently, the accounts of their spiritual responses and manifested traces are scattered throughout scriptures and biographies. Unless one is extensively well-read, they cannot be known in detail. Because of this, practitioners in the lineage of the Mountain School rarely fathom the origins of their patriarchs' meritorious virtues. Alas! The earlier Confucians had a saying: 'To praise an ancestor who has no excellence is slander; to be unaware of the goodness [they had] is ignorance; to know of it and not transmit it is unbenevolent.' These three things are what the noble person feels ashamed of; how much more so, then, for those who study the teachings? This foolish one, unworthy though I am among the latter descendants, simply wishes to avoid the fault of not transmitting [them]. I have carefully collected records from the texts and recorded them fully above, so as to bequeath them to later worthy ones. May the boundless propagation and exaltation [of the teaching] have ground from which to emulate their virtues, and thus not be without benefit. Prefaced on the full moon day of the twelfth month in the first year of the Jiading era [1208 CE], while residing at the Ningcui Pavilion of Zhufeng.