曆代法寶記 1.11

1.11

Chan Master Chuji was a native of Fucheng County in Mianzhou. His secular surname was Tang. For generations his family loved Confucianism, and he constantly studied the Odes and Rites, possessing a sense of duty and filial conduct. At the age of ten, his father died. He sighed, saying, 'Since heaven and earth are no more [for me], and I have heard that the Buddha's Dharma is inconceivable and pulls one out from the suffering of birth and death,' he thereupon went to Upādhyāya Shen. Upādhyāya Shen asked, 'Why have you come?' He replied, 'I have deliberately come to take refuge with you, Upādhyāya.' The Upādhyāya knew he was no ordinary man. On the day [Shen] had to proceed to the capital, [Chuji] carried the Grand Master on a shoulder-pole all the way to the capital, never shifting shoulders. He was eight feet tall, of awe-inspiring demeanor; among the crowd only his head stood out, and whoever saw him admired and honored him. Later he returned to dwell at Dechun Temple in Zizhou, transforming and guiding sentient beings for over twenty years. Later, in the fourth month of the twentieth year of Kaiyuan, he secretly sent his domestic servant Wang Huang to summon Chan Master Wuxiang of Haedong, and entrusted to him the Dharma and the robe of verification, saying: 'This robe is ancestral master Bodhidharma's robe. Zetian bestowed it upon Upādhyāya Shen, the Upādhyāya gave it to me, and I turn and transmit it to you. Cherish and preserve it well; search out a fine mountain to dwell in.' Later, on the twenty-seventh day of the fifth month of that year, he announced to all his disciples, 'I shall not stay long.' When midnight arrived, he suddenly underwent sitting transformation. Grand Master Chuji was sixty-eight years of age at the time.