淨土往生傳 2.7

2.7

Shi Zhenhui had the secular surname Chen and was a native of Pinglu in Shan. During the Kaihuang era of the Sui, growing weary of worldly life, he served Meditation Master Qing of his home prefecture. Next he went to the capital of Ye, where he received full ordination from Vinaya Master Hong. Hearing later that Meditation Master Xun of Weizhou had profoundly awakened to the Buddha Vehicle, he went to consult and study under him. At the end of the Kaihuang era, staff in hand, he traveled west, his path leading past the Hundred-Family Cliff of Bailu, where he paused to lodge. Someone told Hui, "If you seek a secluded place to dwell, Puban is particularly excellent." Hui accepted this advice and went to Magu in Puban, where he founded a meditation hermitage that became a flourishing pure precinct. At the beginning of the Daye era, he once ingested sealwort and abstained from grain for over a hundred days, dedicating his contemplations to the Pure Land. Soon afterwards he held the summer retreat at Pangu. In the valley was a fierce tiger that had harmed the people for four years; once Hui arrived, it fled altogether. On the seventh day of the tenth month of the eleventh year, he fell ill and passed away at the south cliff of that valley, at the age of forty-seven, having been a monk for thirty-five years. Earlier, Hui had loved investigating the sūtras and the vinaya until it became second nature to him. Upon learning of the gradual stages of the nine grades of the Pure Land, he set about cultivating them. Fearing that his practice was not yet steadfast and that demons or non-Buddhists might interfere, he remarked, "The disparate thoughts of ordinary beings are tangled and not unified; if I do not rely on the power of the sage, whom can I lean upon?" He then leveled a pure site and constructed a square altar. On the altar he erected a high platform, adorned inside and out with pearls, jade, and various treasures. On the four sides of the platform he set four pillars with jeweled banners, draped with nets and curtains that reflected one another. Amitāyus Buddha sat in the center, flanked by Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta. Below, it was interspersed with blue-green tiles resembling a ground of lapis lazuli, with golden cords laid out to delineate its paths. Beneath the paths were placed jeweled golden banners, their eight directions matching the one pattern, following the sūtra’s words that seven-jeweled golden banners uphold the lapis lazuli ground. Whenever Hui performed contemplations before the images, he always bathed his body and washed his robes before daring to enter. When he emerged, he stood erect and composed his thoughts with solemn reverence, as if the divine transformations of all the Buddhas were constantly before him. On the night of his death, he told his disciples, "I have exerted myself somewhat in the practices for the Pure Land. Unexpectedly, this very night I have seen a lotus blossom beforehand, opening and closing again, as though it were about to carry me aloft, while my feet stand in the void." Before a moment had passed, the assembly heard the sound of a bell and also heard a heavenly wind blowing from all four directions, as an extraordinary light suddenly flared up. Hui then passed away.