鐔津文集 13.9

13.9

The Master’s Dharma name was Youmin. He was a native of Yushan in Xinyang; his original surname was Ye. In his childhood he already had the aspiration to leave secular life. Having informed his parents and obtained their permission, he entered the Xingjiao Hermitage of his county, leaving home under the monk Shengtan. After receiving the full precepts, he traveled in the four directions seeking the Dao. Arriving in Hulin, he met Chan Master Huiming; as he possessed the capacity for the Dao in an unassuming way, he respectfully accepted his teachings as a disciple and mastered his Dharma completely. In Dharma duties, whether hard or easy, he experienced them all. In time, Huiming ordered him to supervise the affairs of the monastery. Shortly thereafter, the monastery was completely destroyed by a great fire. When the authorities investigated the fault, his colleagues felt endangered and all feared calamity. The Master said to them: “I oversee the affairs of the monastery; the fault rests entirely on me. I alone shall bear it; you need not be afraid.” The officials indeed did not enter the monastery to question the Master, but merely punished the cook. Was this not what the ancients meant by ‘facing adversity without seeking escape’? Later, when Huiming passed away and his funeral was completed, the Master led the assembly, saying: “Our prefecture should invite the Great Elder Huizhao (Venerable Cong) to preside over the monastery to succeed Huiming, and the previous supervisor should still assist him.” Striving together, they restored the monastery. In less than ten years, they reconstructed the halls and dwellings, towering over a thousand bays and even more magnificent than before. During the Qingli era, the court, based on recommendations, bestowed upon him the monastic robes, and later also granted the title Puci. When Huizhao passed away, the Master was severely ill, yet he forced himself to handle the funeral affairs despite his illness. When Huizhao was near death, his testamentary letter had recommended the Master to succeed him, but the authorities doubted the matter and did not grant him Lingyin, appointing another monk to preside instead. The Master served that monk with even greater reverence, without the slightest resentment or stinginess appearing in his demeanor, so that people respected his virtue all the more. At that time, Prefect and Longtu Academician Lord Ji learned of this, and thus appointed the Master as Elder to reside at the Upper Tianzhu Hermitage. When Lord Sun of the Guanwen Pavilion first arrived to administer Hangzhou as Grand Academician of the Zizheng Hall, he specially transferred him to preside over Lingyin. On the day he first expounded the Dharma, Lord Sun and high-ranking officials and nobility, no fewer than a hundred persons, participated in the gathering, burning incense and listening to his discourse; while monks and laypeople, old and young, noble and base, arrived shoulder to shoulder by the tens of thousands. On that day, the voices of people and tracks of horses filled the valleys; such splendor for a Dharma assembly has rarely been seen. The Master was by nature broad-minded, fair, compassionate, and forgiving, accommodating and generous to others, and people praised him greatly. Thus, having resided at the monastery for merely six years, the monastery was increasingly repaired and the assembly grew ever more peaceful; he ordained twenty-three disciples. In the beginning of the mid-winter of the yihai year of the Jiayou era, he suddenly contracted a slight illness and took to bed. One day before his passing, he spoke with me, Meng, about handing the monastery over to the present Chan Virtuous One Zhi; his tone was precise and calm, as sound as usual. On the thirteenth day at cockcrow, he arose and washed, asked the hour, and then sat peacefully and passed away. His worldly age was sixty-one; his monastic seniority was forty-one. On the twenty-ninth day of that month, he was interred in a stūpa due north of the Ape-Calling Ravine, within the monastery wall. After the stūpa was completed, Master Zhi, presenting his biography, asked me, Meng, to write an epitaph. In the ancient Biographies of Eminent Monks, those among our peers who possessed virtue, valuable teachings, or great meritorious service to the religion were recorded. Lingyin today is among the foremost celebrated monasteries in the realm, upon which the flourishing and declining of our Buddha-Dharma depends. Alas, with such lifelong service to this monastery, can it not be said that Puci performed meritorious service for the Dharma? Therefore, I did not decline, and recorded his deeds. The epitaph reads: