傳法正宗記 6.30

6.30

He also said, "Seventy years after my passing, two bodhisattvas will come from the east: one a renunciant and one a householder. Together they will flourish the teaching and transformation, manage my saṅghārāma, and uphold my essential teachings." Shortly after, he went to Xinzhou. Soon after, having bathed at Gu'en Monastery, he sat peacefully and transformed. An extraordinary fragrance filled the air, and a white rainbow connected to the ground. That time was in fact the second day of the eighth month in the second year of Xiantian (gui-chou) [713 CE]. At that time, the two prefectures of Xinzhou and Shaozhou each strove to build a stupa and contested over welcoming his true body, unable to decide for a long time. The prefectural governor, together with the people of both prefectures, burnt incense and prayed, saying, "Whichever direction the smoke of the incense points, there he may be conveyed." Presently, the incense smoke abruptly arose and drifted north toward the boundary of Shaozhou. The people of Shaozhou were thus able, on the thirteenth day of the eleventh month, to enshrine him in a stupa on the shore of Caohou Creek; this is the present Nanhua Monastery. His worldly age was seventy-six. The former prefectural governor Wei Ju wrote his stele. Earlier, when the Venerable entered the stupa, his disciples remembered his prediction that someone would come to take his head; they consequently used iron plates to securely protect his neck. In the tenth year of Kaiyuan, on the night of the third day of the eighth month, around midnight, a sound like the dragging of iron chains was suddenly heard from the stupa. The stupa-keeper was startled awake and suddenly saw a person resembling a mourning son (at that time someone was seen wearing mourning clothes and mingling among them; saying he resembled a mourning son merely accords with the hidden meaning of the patriarchal master's cryptic words) rushing out from the stupa. Upon checking immediately, traces were already found on the iron-plate protection. They subsequently reported the burglary to the prefecture and county, and officials conducted a strict search. Later, in Shijiao Village of that county, they indeed captured the thief. The officials interrogated him: the thief called himself Zhang Jingman, originally from Liang County of Ruzhou. He had just been at Kaiyuan Monastery in Hongzhou, where he had been hired by a monk from Silla named Jin Dabi to take the patriarch's head and return to his country to venerate it. The officials wished to convict him according to the law, but the prefectural governor, seeing that his intention was not malicious, questioned the Venerable's disciple, Chan Master Lingtao. Lingtao, evaluating it from the standpoint of the Buddha-Dharma, wished the officials to pardon him. The prefectural governor considered Tao's intention noble and accordingly showed him clemency. At that time, the prefectural governor was Liu Wutian, the county magistrate was Yang Kan, and the thief was Zhang Jingman—proving that his prophetic words were fulfilled without the slightest error. During the Shangyuan era, Emperor Suzong, admiring the Venerable's Way, once decreed that the transmitted robe and bowl be brought to the inner palace to be venerated. When Suzong passed away and Daizong ascended the throne, on the fifth day of the fifth month in the first year of Yongtai, [the emperor] dreamed that the Venerable requested the return of his robe and bowl. The Son of Heaven respected his Dharma all the more, and on the seventh day he dispatched an imperial envoy to convey them back to Caoxi. Emperor Xianzong bestowed the posthumous title "Chan Master Dajian" and named the stupa "Yuanhe Lingzhao". Initially, Dajian manifested as a wood-gatherer, mingling with ordinary people and claiming not to know letters. But when he gradually became renowned for the Way, whether it was the scriptures of the Tripiṭaka or mundane books and chronicles, he cited them in his discourses, every one as though he had long practiced them. Expounding the sacred path and explaining the meaning of the sūtras, his unhindered great eloquence was as vast as rivers and oceans, such that no one could fathom its shores. Formerly, when Zhang Jiuling, the Duke of Shixing and prime minister of the Tang, was still a boy, his family brought him to pay homage to Dajian. Dajian stroked his head and said, "This is an extraordinary boy; he will surely become an instrument of state." His foreknowledge and foresight were all of this kind. Who could say he did not know mundane letters? Those with understanding say, "This was not truly an inability to know letters, but a manifestation of not knowing them." Because his Way is not something reached by mundane letters and language, it was meant to symbolize something. Furthermore, the eastward transmission of the true Dharma became all the broader from Dajian onward. Those who succeeded him were all outstanding great beings dispersed across the four seas. Their virtue and Dharma have benefited others, and people rely upon them to this day. Considering this, could he truly have been a mere woodcutter who only then began studying the Way? He was indeed a sage who descended his traces, demonstrating his emergence from humble origins. Was he at the stage of Equal Enlightenment or Wondrous Enlightenment? It cannot be definitively known.