往生集 2.286

2.286

大明方氏。諸生吳應道室也。三十而寡。守志歸佛。專修淨土。一老媼亦齋戒。相隨逐二十年。萬曆乙酉。時年五十矣。小疾呼老媼相對念佛不輟無一語及他務卒前一日。沐浴更衣。明晨然香禮佛。還坐一榻而逝。有子用先。第進士不妄語人也。為予道始末如此。

Under the Great Ming, Lady Fang was the wife of the licentiate Wu Yingdao. Widowed at thirty, she maintained her resolve and took refuge in the Buddha, exclusively cultivating the Pure Land. An elderly woman also kept vegetarian precepts and accompanied her for twenty years. In the yiyou year of the Wanli era, Lady Fang was fifty years old. Falling slightly ill, she called the elderly woman to face her and practice buddhamanasikāra without stopping, without a single word concerning other affairs. The day before her death, she bathed and changed her clothes. The next morning, she lit incense and bowed to the Buddha, returned to sit on a couch, and departed. Her son, Yongxian, who attained the jinshi degree, was a man who did not speak falsely; he recounted the beginning and end of the matter to me in this way.