天台九祖傳 1.6

1.6

The Third Patriarch, the Venerable of Nanyue, whose taboo name was Huisi, was of the Li family and a native of Wujin. From his youth he was broad-minded and compassionate. A fleshy uṣṇīṣa grew atop his head, and his ears had double rings. He had the gaze of an elephant and the gait of an ox, adorned with superior physical marks, naturally distinguished from the ordinary world. He once dreamed that an Indian monk exhorted him to leave the secular life; startled into awakening by this auspicious sign, he took leave of his parents and entered the Way. He held fast to plain simplicity, his pure conduct unblemished. Upon receiving the full precepts, he ate only one meal a day and accepted no special offerings. He retired to secluded tranquility, completely putting an end to escorting and receiving visitors. He chanted sūtras such as the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka. When the small hut where he stayed was burned down by someone, he immediately manifested an epidemic illness; seeking with sincerity and begging for repentance, he built a grass hut again and held the sūtra as before, whereupon his ailment subsided. He further dreamed of several hundred Indian monks of extraordinary appearance and garb, who requested the monastic assembly to perform the karmavācanā rite and confer [the precepts upon him] in full completion. Awakening with a start, he realised he had received them in a dream, and his diligent devotion deepened even more, discarding neither dusk nor dawn. He also dreamed that Maitreya and his retinue assembled together at the Dragon Flower Tree. Huisi thought to himself: 'During the Final Dharma age of Śākyamuni, I have received and upheld the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka; now encountering the Merciful Honoured One, I am moved to sorrowful weeping.' Suddenly he had an awakening, and became all the more energetic. Miraculous omens multiplied; offerings were lavishly prepared, as though heavenly youths were waiting upon and guarding him. Because he read the Miaoshengding jing praising the merits of dhyāna, he resolved to practice meditation. At that time, the Chan master of Beiqi gathered several hundred disciples; the community's discipline was pure and solemn, and both monastics and laity held him in high esteem. Huisi went and took refuge, receiving the true Dharma from him. By nature fond of bitter discipline, he took tending to the monastic community as his occupation; winter and summer he provided offerings without shirking toil and hardship. Day and night he focused his mind, deliberating upon principle and practice. Through these two periods, he had not yet attained realization. Then, in the following summer retreat, he sat upright without lying down, tethering his mindfulness to what was before him. In the first three weeks, a slight tranquil contemplation arose, and he saw the karmic signs of good and evil throughout a lifetime. Becoming doubly valiant and vigorous, he then stirred the eight sensations and gave rise to the fundamental first dhyāna. The obstacles to dhyāna suddenly arose: his four limbs grew slack and weak, incapable of walking, his body not obeying his mind. He immediately observed within himself: 'My present illness is entirely born from karma. Karma arises from the mind; originally there is no external object. Looking back into the source of the mind, karma cannot be found. The body is like the shadow of a cloud: its marks exist, but its substance is empty.' Having contemplated thus, inverted thoughts were extinguished, the nature of mind became pure, and his suffering was eliminated. He also brought forth the meditation on emptiness, and his mind and objects became vast and open. When the summer retreat ended and he received monastic rains-retreats, he sighed that he had gained nothing. Lamenting his own torpor and that his life had passed in vain, he harboured deep shame and let his body lean against the wall. Before his back touched it, all of a sudden he awakened. The Saddharmapuṇḍarīka samādhi and the Dharma-gates of the Mahāyāna were clearly mastered in a single thought. The sixteen superior contemplations and the eight liberations entered him gradually; he then penetrated them on his own, not relying on awakening from another. The longer he investigated and refined it, the more his previous contemplation increased. His reputation and conduct were heard far and wide, and the four directions revered his virtue. His students grew daily in number, and those with opportune awakening were indeed manifold. Thereupon, with the teachings of dhyāna and wisdom in the Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna, he expounded and illustrated them with parables to draw in himself and others. The assembly was a mix of refined and coarse, from which disputes arose. Out of jealousy, some used poisoned bird venom, but the poison could not harm him; heterodox paths plotted schemes, but their schemes could do no harm. He then looked back at his disciples and said: 'When the Great Sage was in the world, he did not avoid slanderous rumors; how much less can I, devoid of virtue, escape this blame? The blame is from past actions; when the time comes, it must be received. This is a personal matter. However, the Dharma of our Buddha will soon be extinguished; where should we go to escape this calamity?' At that time, a voice in the air said: 'If you wish to cultivate meditation, you may go to Wudang and Nanyue; these are mountains for entering the Way.' At the beginning of the Wuping era of Qi, turning his back on Songyang, he led his disciples south. When he first arrived in Guangzhou, it coincided with the downfall of Emperor Xiaoyuan of Liang and civil turmoil; the road ahead was blocked, so he temporarily stayed at Mount Dasu. Within a few years, those who came to follow him were as numerous as a marketplace. He would often instruct the assembly: 'The source of the Way is not far; the ocean of nature is not distant. Only seek it within oneself; do not look for it from others. If you search for it, you will not find it; even if you find it, it will not be real.' Therefore, he provided material necessities and instructed them with the flavor of principle, merely desiring that students awaken to their own original mind. Thus, with meritorious donations from monastics and laity, he made golden-character Prajñā and golden-character Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtras with lapis lazuli jewel caskets. The assembly requested him to lecture on the two sūtras; immediately, his profound introductory expositions and verse-by-verse analyses reached the utmost depths, all of them mysterious and subtle. Later, he commanded the Great Master [Zhiyi] to lecture on the Golden Sūtra on his behalf. When it came to the section where 'one mind is endowed with the myriad practices,' the Great Master had doubts. The Master said: 'What you doubted just now is merely the meaning of the successive stages of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā; it is not yet the perfect and sudden import of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka. In the past, I suddenly gave rise to all dharmas in a single mind. Since I have personally verified this, do not trouble yourself with doubts.' Thereupon, Zhiyi inquired into and received the three-week realm of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka practice, greatly grasping the profound import. He also inquired about the Master's own stage: 'Is it the ten bhūmis?' The Master replied: 'No. I am only at the iron-wheel stage of the ten faiths.' However, in his modest retirement, his words are difficult to take at face value, and his fundamental status and trace manifestations cannot be fully scrutinized. Later at Dasu, troubled by beacon alarms, the mountain community was unsettled and felt unsafe in that place. Taking more than forty monks, he headed straight for Nanyue. It was the twenty-second day of the sixth month in summer, the wuzi year, the second year of Guangda of Chen. Upon arriving, he announced: 'I shall stay here for only ten full years.' Prior to this, the Liang monk Huihai had resided at Hengyue Temple; when he saw the Master, he was delighted as if with an old acquaintance, and offered the temple, asking the Master to stay there. Hai relocated elsewhere, and the Master again moved his assembly to Fangguang. His miraculous traces and extraordinary deeds are fully recorded in a separate biography. He once said: 'In a previous life I walked this place.' Ascending to the summit of the mountain, he lingered by a grove and spring; the place was lofty and serene, as though he remembered something. He then pointed to a rocky thicket and said: 'In my previous life I entered meditation here; bandits cut off my head.' The assembly dug together and found a pile of bones, which indeed lacked a head. This is what is now called the One-Life Cliff. He also pointed to a flat boulder and said: 'Beneath this are also the bones of my past life.' The assembly lifted the stone to verify it, and indeed found red and white bones interlinked like chain hooks. Right at that site, stones were piled to entomb the bones, and a stupa was erected at its peak, called the Two-Lives Pagoda. Strolling eastward and ascending, he saw the deep recesses of a stone gate and said: 'This secluded portal of the miraculous cliff will surely increase the power of the Way for those who pass by; it is an ancient temple. I also previously resided here.' Cleaving through the dense overgrowth with an axe, they indeed found monks' utensils and the foundations of hall buildings and layered bricks. The land was high and clear, right at the heart of the Great Mountain. Thereupon a terrace was built, and he expounded the Prajñāpāramitā for the assembly; thus it was named the Three-Lives Treasury. The proofs of such events were not few. The eminent scholars of the Chen dynasty all took refuge in him. At that time, there were followers of heterodox paths who harboured jealousy and secretly reported to the Chen emperor, falsely accusing the Master, as a northern monk, of secretly receiving the Qi dynasty's deed to sever the heart of the mountain. When the imperial envoy arrived at the mountain, he saw two tigers roaring in fury, and retreated in terror. A few days later, he returned to summon the Master. The Master said to the envoy: 'Your Excellency may go first; this poor monk will follow.' The Master flew his staff and travelled to the capital; at all four gates, the Master was seen entering simultaneously. The monitoring envoy and others reported this together. The emperor, amazed, granted him an audience. Having received the imperial decree in response to his spiritual efficacy, he was welcomed to the lower capital to reside at Xixuan Temple, and was not interrogated at all. Earlier, a small bee had flown and stung the Master's forehead; shortly after, a large bee bit and killed the small one, and flew off carrying its head before the Master. Not long after, one of the plotters died violently, and two were bitten to death by rabid dogs. What the portent of the bees portended was thereby verified. When the Master went to Waguan, he was not wetted by rain, nor soiled by treading in mud. The Monastic Controller Huigao and various disciples met him on the road and said: 'How did this man of spiritual wonders arrive here?' The entire court fixed its gaze upon him, and monastics and laity leaned toward him in admiration. The Grand Commander Wu Mingche respected him to the utmost and offered him a rhinoceros-horn pillow. The Adjunct General Xiahou Xiaowei went to the temple to pay his respects; on the road, he silently thought of the pillow offered by Wu, Equal to the Three Excellencies, wishing he could see it. When he arrived at the Master's place and was about to pay homage, the Master immediately said to Wei: 'If you wish to see the rhinoceros-horn pillow, you may go and look at it.' Another day, a voice suddenly announced: 'Sweep and clean the courtyard and halls; a sage will soon arrive.' It happened just as spoken: in a moment, the Master arrived. Wei held him in admiration and spoke of it to monastics and laity; hence high and low, monks and laypeople all turned to him. Intending to return to Nanyue, he dared not linger. The emperor saw him off with extraordinary etiquette, designating him as Great Chan Master, and provided boats and provisions to send him to the riverbank. The Master said: 'I have lodged my trace at Nanyue for only ten years; when the period expires, I must depart.' The assembly at the time did not understand his meaning. When he returned to the mountain, every year the Chen emperor sent three letters of greeting, and offerings accumulated in abundance, with supreme honor and glory. His preaching of the Dharma doubled as usual, his spiritual wonders unfathomable: sometimes manifesting large or small forms, sometimes serenely concealing his body, or with strange fragrances, rare colors, and auspicious omens appearing in abundance. As his end approached, he came down from the mountain peak to the halfway bodhimanda and gathered his disciples, expounding the Dharma for consecutive days with severe and cutting reproofs, so that those who heard him were chilled to the heart. He told the assembly: 'If there are ten people who do not begrudge their bodies and lives, constantly cultivating the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, the Pratyutpanna Buddha-mindfulness samādhi, and the Vaipulya repentance—if there are practitioners of these practices, whatever they need, I will personally supply it, and surely benefit them. If not, I shall depart far away.' Because the ascetic practices were difficult, in the end no one responded. He therefore dismissed the assembly, collected his thoughts, and passed away calmly. The novice Lingbian, seeing the Master breathe his last, wailed and cried aloud. The Master then opened his eyes and said: 'You are an evil māra! I was about to depart, and the holy ones were welcoming me to discuss where I would be reborn; why do you startle me and disturb my concentration? Foolish man, get out!' Thereupon he gathered his mind once more, sat upright until his demise. All smelled a strange fragrance filling the room; the crown of his head was warm, his body soft, and his complexion as if alive. His age was sixty-four; it was the twenty-second day of the sixth month, the dingyou year, the ninth year of the Taijian era of the Chen dynasty. Verifying the ten-year period, it tallied exactly. In daily life, the Master wore plain cloth; when cold, he wadded it with mugwort, and his disciples' attire was generally the same. Whenever he composed works, they were dictated into chapters without any deletion or revision: The Forty-Two Syllable Gate in two fascicles; The Dharma-Gate of Non-Contentious Practice in two fascicles; and The Profound Meaning of the Commentary, According with One's Own Will, Pleasant Practices, The Gradual Essentials of Dhyāna, and The Contemplation Gates of the Three Wisdoms—these five works in one fascicle each, all circulating in the world. Vinaya Master Nanshan eulogized: 'Ever since the Buddha's Dharma spread south of the Yangzi, doctrinal teachings were heavily prioritized, whereas as for Chan methods, they were almost non-existent. But the Venerable of Nanyue, sighing with concern, came to the southern regions, developing both meditation and wisdom. By day he discussed doctrinal principles, and by night he reflected and deliberated. Thus whatever words he uttered were without exception far-reaching. Giving rise to wisdom through meditation—this principle is not in vain. The northern and southern Chan lineages rarely fail to inherit his thread. Moreover, his physical marks were outstanding, capable of commanding reverence naturally; those who saw him experienced a transformation of heart and felt unawares inclined to submit. He was skilled at reading people's minds and clearly discerning hidden inclinations. Slow to speak of faults, he expediently instructed and guided, practicing great compassion and upholding the bodhisattva precepts. Regarding silks, floss, and leather, as they mostly involve harming life, his disciples' robes and garments were generally made of cloth; when it was cold, mugwort quilted robes were used to withstand wind and frost. Since the Buddha's Dharma flowed east, nearly six hundred years have passed; only this compassionate conduct of Nanyue is truly worthy of refuge. I have personally participated in translation and repeatedly seen Sanskrit sūtras; inquiring into the Dharma robes worn, to this day none are made of silk from silkworms. Even if the precept ordination is added, it is not deemed successful. Whether begged or received, making robes from silkworm floss is determined by the Vinaya to require cutting and discarding. Bound by attachment and desire, how could one indulge it? Only Nanyue made independent judgment and loftily complied with the sacred regulations.'