廣弘明集 17.111

17.111

At midday on the eighth day of the fourth month, as the relics were about to be interred, monastics and laypeople wailed with sorrow. Suddenly, clouds arose all at once from the four directions like smoke and mist, gradually ascending towards the sun, circling the sun to form a halo like a carriage wheel. Inside was a separate, round white cloud veiling the sun; the sunlight gradually dimmed to the size of a small cup, while outside the wheel all around, the clouds formed spokes in succession. Both the wheel and the spokes were of a reddish-purple colour. When the interment of the relics was complete, the clouds scattered and disappeared, and the sunlight once again became clear and bright. Furthermore, outside the northwest wall of the pagoda compound, there were numerous natural banners and canopies, and some also saw banners and canopies surrounding the relics. At the time, people thought someone was holding banners to make offerings, but when the interment of the relics was complete, these banners and canopies suddenly disappeared. At that time, many monastics and laypeople saw this. By the xu hour, Sima Zhang Bei and others saw a cyan cloud vapour above the pagoda emerging from within it. The cloud was extremely fragrant. He immediately called the envoy, Gentleman of the Forest of Literature Wei Fan, and Tan Chang of Daxing Temple to go inside and inspect it. Zhang Bei, Wei Fan, and the others all saw streaming light flowing towards the northwest and southeast, vanishing after a short moment.