往生西方淨土瑞應傳 1.3

1.3

Dharma Master Huiyuan, a monk of the Eastern Jin dynasty, was a native of Yanmen. He chose to reside on Mount Lu for over thirty years; his shadow never left the mountain, and his footsteps never entered worldly affairs. In seeing off guests, the Tiger Brook served as his boundary. Although widely versed in the various canonical treatises, he especially propagated the Western Pure Land. Beneath the crags he built a Pure Land Hall, where he performed prostrations and kṣamā morning and evening. The courtier Xie Lingyun, the lofty recluse Liu Yimin, and others all abandoned worldly honor and cultivated the Pure Land together with him. There were one hundred and twenty-three lay believers in all. Before the image of Amitāyus, they established a vegetarian feast and took vows. Yimin composed an essay of praise and eulogy, which moved an immortal to ride a cloud and listen to the discourse, or at times clear chanting resounded, carrying on the long breeze. On the sixth day of the eighth month in the twelfth year of the Yixi reign era, the noble assembly welcomed him from afar; after bestowing his final instructions at the point of death, the Dharma Master passed away lying on his right side, at the age of eighty-three.