景德傳燈錄 8.3

8.3

Chan Master Wuye of Fenzhou was a native of Shangluo in Shangzhou. His family name was Du. Initially, his mother, of the Li family, heard a voice in the empty air asking, "May I lodge here?" She thereupon realized she was pregnant. On the night of his birth, divine light filled the room. When he reached boyhood, when walking he always looked straight ahead, and when sitting he sat cross-legged. At the age of nine, he relied on Chan Master Zhiben of Kaiyuan Temple and received the Mahāyāna sūtras; reading five lines at a glance, he recited them without omission. At twelve he shaved his head. At twenty he received full ordination under Vinaya Master You of Xiangzhou. He studied the commentary on the Fourfold Vinaya; as soon as he finished, he was able to expound it. He regularly lectured on the great text of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra for the monastic assembly, without interruption through winter and summer. Later, hearing that Great Master Ma's Chan gate was flourishing, he went specially to pay homage. When Mazu observed his imposing appearance and voice like a bell, he said, "A majestic Buddha hall, but no Buddha inside!" The Master made prostrations, knelt, and asked, "I have roughly investigated the purport of the literature of the three vehicles. I have often heard it said in the Chan school that 'mind itself is Buddha,' but truly I have not yet understood." Mazu said, "The very mind that has not yet understood is it; there is nothing else." The Master asked further, "What is the mind-seal secretly transmitted when the ancestral master came from the west?" Mazu said, "Virtuous One, you are right in the midst of clamor. Go away for now and come another time." As the Master was just leaving, Mazu called out, "Virtuous One!" The Master turned his head. Mazu said, "What is it?" The Master immediately attained awakening and bowed. Mazu said, "What is this dull fellow bowing for?" (Yunju Xi commented: "Where was Fenzhou right in the midst of clamor?") Having attained the purport, he soon went to Caoxi to pay homage at the ancestral stupa, and searched for holy traces throughout Mount Lu and Tiantai. From Luoyang he arrived in Chang'an, resting at Ximing Temple. The monastic assembly nominated him to serve as Virtuous One of the Two Streets. The Master said, "This is not my original intention." Later he arrived in Shangdang. The military commissioner Li Baozhen respected the Master's renown and conduct, waiting upon him morning and evening. The Master often showed a weary countenance, and said to people, "I originally came to escape the bustle of the imperial capital, but now I am once again burdened with attending upon lords and nobles. How could this be my intent?" He then went up into the county to Mount Baofu. Not long after, he went to Jin'ge Temple on Qingliang, re-reading the entire Tripitaka, completing it in eight years. He went south again to Xihe. The Prefect Dong Shuchan invited him to reside at Kaiyuan Hermitage. The Master said, "My affinity is here." From then on, he rained down the great Dharma rain for nearly twenty years (his extensive sayings are detailed in a separate record). Monastics and laypeople of the Bing and Fen regions all turned to his teaching. Whenever students raised questions, the Master mostly answered them saying, "Do not engage in false thinking." Emperor Xianzong of the Tang repeatedly sent envoys to summon him, but the Master always declined on account of illness and did not go. When Muzong ascended the throne, he wished to pay homage, so he ordered Lingfu, the monastic register of the Two Streets, and others to deliver an imperial decree inviting him. Arriving there, they made prostrations and said, "His Majesty's gracious decree this time is unlike ordinary times. We pray the upādhyāya will comply with the imperial wish and not speak of illness." The Master smiled and said, "What virtue does this poor monk have to repeatedly trouble the lord of the world? Please go ahead; I will depart by another road." Thereupon he bathed and shaved his head. At midnight, he addressed his disciples Huiyin and others: "The nature of your seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing has the same lifespan as the great void; it is neither produced nor destroyed. All realms are fundamentally empty and quiescent, with not a single dharma to be attained. The deluded do not understand and are thus confounded by external realms. Once confounded by external realms, they transmute continuously without end. You should know that mind-nature is fundamentally self-existent, not produced by conditioned action; it is like a diamond, indestructible. All dharmas are like shadows and echoes, possessing no reality. Therefore the sūtra says: 'Only this one matter is real; the remaining two are not true.' Constantly understanding that everything is empty, without a single thing confronting the mind—this is where all Buddhas apply their minds. Strive diligently to practice it!" Having spoken, he sat cross-legged and passed away. On the day of cremation, auspicious clouds of five colors and an extraordinary fragrance pervaded everywhere. The relics obtained were dazzling like jade pearls. His disciples placed them in a golden coffin. On the twenty-first day of the twelfth month of the third year of Changqing, he was entombed in a stone stupa. He lived sixty-two years and had been a monk for forty-two years. He was imperial-conferred the posthumous title "State Preceptor Dada" (Great Penetration), and his stupa was named Chengyuan (Pure Source).