華嚴經傳記 5.9

5.9

Retired Scholar Sun Simiao was a native of Yong'an in Yongzhou. His spiritual radiance was lofty and far-reaching, and his deportment was stalwart. He stood seven feet tall, with clear, wide-set eyebrows and eyes. His learning encompassed both internal and external treatises, and he was especially adept in medicine. The arts of yin and yang, calculation, astrology, calendar-making, and divination were all thoroughly understood by him. Good at nourishing nature and fond of ingesting alchemical substances, he once took cinnabar pills of flowing pearl and mica powder; his skin remained smooth and lustrous, and his teeth and hair did not deteriorate. Elders handed down the saying that he was over a hundred years old, yet looking at his appearance he seemed only about seventy or eighty. In the first year of Yining, when Gaozu rose in rebellion in Bingzhou, Simiao was within the borders. Gaozu, knowing his far-reaching mastery, treated him with courtesy, appointing him a military commander and conferring upon him a fourth-rank post, which he steadfastly declined and did not accept. Later he wandered through various places, having no permanent dwelling, benefiting beings according to the times and making medical prescriptions his sole affair; whenever anyone came to consult him, there was none he did not heal and rescue. He often exhorted both monastic and lay people to copy more than seven hundred and fifty sets of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. During the Shangyuan and Yifeng eras, he resided in the border area of Wannian and Chang'an counties. He once conversed with people, speaking of figures from the Qi and Wei and the old capital of Luoyang, describing the courtiers in the city and the monastics in the temples as vividly as if he had seen them with his own eyes; yet when they were about to question him further, he would fall silent. He once compiled the wondrous arts of famous physicians ancient and modern into a work entitled Master Sun's Qianjin fang, totaling sixty fascicles, which completely exhausted practical uses of the time, and presented it to the emperor. Gaozu rewarded him with bundles of silk and was about to grant him an honorable official rank, which he bitterly declined and would not accept. He was frequently summoned into the inner palace, staying for months without coming out to await orders in the forbidden quarters, and was treated with extreme favor. The Emperor once casually asked him: 'What merit is the very best to cultivate?' Simiao replied: 'Why does the Heavenly Emperor not read the Avataṃsaka Sūtra?' The Emperor asked why. Simiao said: 'The great personage of a Heavenly Emperor must read a great scripture. It is like a precious vessel and its lid; they ought to match each other.' The Emperor said: 'If we speak of great scriptures, recently the Great Prajñā translated by Dharma Master Xuanzang totals six hundred fascicles. Is that not great?' Simiao said: 'The Prajñā school of emptiness is but a branch that has emerged from within the Avataṃsaka Sūtra.' The Emperor placed deep faith in this. Simiao died before the Yongchun era. Simiao had a son named Xingzhen, also named Yuanyi, who was upright, broad-minded, possessing a strong memory and wide learning. He contemplated the essentials of the Dharma deeply, dedicated his merit toward the One Vehicle, continued in his father's style, and also took the Avataṃsaka as his vocation, becoming famous in his time and truly proving to be a layman of lofty faith.