廣弘明集 9.9

9.9

1. The Supreme Dao Lord creates heaven and earth. The Initial Record states: Laozi, seeing the virtue of King You of Zhou decline, wished to cross the pass westward. He made an appointment with Yin Xi to meet three years later in the Qingyang liver in the market of Chang'an. Laozi then took birth in the womb of an empress. When the appointed time arrived, Yin Xi saw someone selling Qingyang liver. Thereupon he searched and found Laozi rising from his mother's bosom, with white hair and temples, sixteen feet in height, wearing a heavenly crown and holding a golden staff. Leading Yin Xi, he converted the barbarians, retreating into Mount Shouyang, where purple clouds covered them. The barbarian king suspected sorcery and boiled Laozi in a cauldron, but it did not become hot. The Old Lord was furious and interrogated and executed the barbarian king; his seven sons and one-tenth of the countrymen died together. Only then did the king submit and command the countrymen to accept conversion, shaving their heads, remaining unmarried, receiving the two hundred and fifty precepts, and making statues of his form with incense and fire to worship. Laozi thereupon transformed his body: his left eye became the sun, his right eye became the moon; his head became Mount Kunlun, his hair became the constellations; his bones became dragons, his flesh became beasts, his intestines became snakes, his belly became the sea, his fingers became the Five Sacred Mountains, his body hair became grass and trees, his heart became the canopy, down to his two kidneys uniting to form the true, essential parents.