天台九祖傳 1.5

1.5

The Second Patriarch, the Venerable of Beiqi, had the taboo name Huiwen. (His virtuous conduct is not seen in an original biography.) He lived during the era of Gao of Qi. (Qi was the state title. Gao refers to the High Ancestor, a man of Bohai with the surname Gao, a descendant of the Qi grand master Gao Xi. After Gao Huan, Gao Yang received the abdication from Wei. He established his capital at Ye in Xiangzhou, which was Northern Qi.) He strode unmatched between the Yellow and Huai Rivers. (There was no rival to his converting others; thus it is said of north of the Yellow River, and "Huai" refers to the south, where he walked and transformed in the world.) His Dharma-door was not something known to the world. (This clarifies that what he realized was so profound that it was not known to others.) Treading the earth and carrying the heavens, no one knew their height and depth. (The Venerable's Dharma moved in the world just as someone treading the earth does not know the earth's depth, or carrying the heavens does not know the heavens' height.) The Venerable applied his mind entirely in reliance on the Expository Treatise. The treatise was spoken by Nāgārjuna. According to the Transmission of the Dharma Treasury, Nāgārjuna was the thirteenth master in the ancestral transmission from the Golden Mouth [of the Buddha]. The Venerable received [the transmission] horizontally across time and took him as his master. Thus Hanlin Academician Liang Su said: "After the Great Hero manifested extinction, the paths of learning branched into schools. As the world declined, the teaching also deteriorated. Therefore the Great Being Nāgārjuna was grieved by this, and thereupon employed expedients to subdue the non-Buddhists. He then gathered together the twelve divisions of scriptures to elucidate the ultimate principle. When these subtle words flowed eastward, our Dhyāna Master of Beiqi attained them, entering the non-dual Dharma-door from within written words, and transmitted it to Nanyue." These words say it all. Later students, revering and honoring him, did not dare to refer to him directly by his taboo name, and so addressed him as the Venerable of Beiqi.