法苑珠林 79.44

79.44

冀州故觀城人姜滕生。武德末年忽遇惡疾。遂入蒙山。醫療積年不損。後始還家。身體瘡爛手足指落。夜眠忽夢見一白石像。可長三尺許。謂之曰。但為我續手令爾即差。至旦忽憶。於武德初年在黍地裏打雀。於故村佛堂中。取維摩經。裂破用。繫杖頭嚇雀。有人見者云道裂經大罪。滕生反更惡罵。遂入堂中打白石像。右手總落。夢中所見宛然舊像。遂往佛前頭面作禮。盡心悔過。雇匠續其像手。造經四十卷。營一精舍。一年之內病得痊愈。鄉人號為聖像。其堂及像並皆見在。

Jiang Tengsheng, a man of former Guancheng in Jizhou, suddenly contracted a foul disease at the end of the Wude era. He then entered Mount Meng, but treatment over accumulated years brought no improvement. Only later did he return home, his body ulcerated and rotten, with his fingers and toes fallen off. Sleeping at night, he suddenly dreamed of a white stone statue about three feet high, which said to him, "If you only restore my hand, I will cause you to be cured at once." At dawn, he suddenly recalled that in the early years of the Wude era, when striking at sparrows in a millet field, he took a Vimalakīrti-sūtra from the Buddhist hall of an old village, tore it apart, and tied it to the tip of a staff to scare sparrows. Someone saw this and said that tearing a sūtra was a grave sin; Tengsheng turned and cursed all the more foully. He then entered the hall and struck the white stone statue, causing its right hand to fall off completely. What he had seen in the dream was precisely this former statue. He then went before the Buddha, bowed his head to the ground, repented with his whole heart, hired craftsmen to restore the statue's hand, produced forty scrolls of sūtras, and built a monastery. Within one year, his illness was completely cured. The villagers called it the sacred statue. Both the hall and the statue are still extant.