景德傳燈錄 3.23

3.23

The thirty-first patriarch, Great Master Daoxin, was of the Sima clan, whose family had lived in Henei for generations and later moved to Guangji County in Qizhou. From birth the Master was extraordinary, and in his youth he was drawn to the teachings of the Emptiness school and various dharma-gates of liberation, just as if it were a past habituation. After inheriting the tradition of the school, he gathered his mind without sleeping, so that his ribs did not touch the mat for nearly sixty years. In the thirteenth year of the Daye era of the Sui, he led his assembly to Jizhou, where they encountered a band of bandits who besieged the city for seventy days without relenting. The multitudes were terrified. The Master took pity on them and instructed them to chant "Mahāprajñā." At that time, the bandits looked toward the parapets and saw what seemed to be divine soldiers. They said to one another, "There must surely be an extraordinary person inside the city; it cannot be attacked." Gradually they drew off. In the wushen year of the Wude era of the Tang, the Master returned to Qichun and resided on Potou Mountain, where students gathered like clouds. One day, on his way to Huangmei County, he met a young boy on the road whose physiognomy was singularly handsome and distinct from ordinary children. The Master asked, "What is your surname [xing]?" He replied, "I have a nature [xing], but it is not an ordinary surname." The Master asked, "What surname [nature] is it?" He replied, "It is the Buddha-nature." The Master asked, "Do you have no nature?" He replied, "Because nature is empty." The Master silently recognized him as a vessel of the Dharma, and at once sent an attendant to his home to request his parents to let him leave the household life. Owing to past karma, the parents showed no reluctance at all and thereupon surrendered him as a disciple, naming him Hongren (The old edition lacks the four characters "naming him Hongren"; they are now added here. If his name is not mentioned, then who would be the person to whom the Dharma was entrusted and the robe transmitted? Moreover, the words "Ren said" appear later, which would also be unclear on its own) and eventually entrusted the Dharma and transmitted the robe to him, speaking a verse: