釋門自鏡錄 1.22

1.22

The nun Zhitong renounced household life in her youth and lived at the Jianjing Monastery in the capital. Her faith in the Way was not firm. In the ninth year of Yuanjia, her teacher died; she abandoned the Way and married Liang Xifu of Wei Commandery as his wife, giving birth to a boy. When he was six or seven years old, the family was extremely poor, with nothing to clothe him. While Tong was a nun, she had several rolls of silk sūtras such as the Sukhāvatīvyūha and the Lotus Sūtra; she boiled and pounded them all to clothe her child. After living thus for a year, she fell ill, trance-like and alarmed, her entire body peeling and rotting like burn sores. Fine white maggots emerged at a rate of more than a pint a day; in agonizing pain and virulent distress, she wailed day and night. A voice was heard in the air saying, "For destroying sūtras to make clothing, she receives this severe retribution." She died after more than ten days.