法苑珠林 86.7

86.7

如最妙初教經說。佛告舍利弗。我憶往昔。有一比丘。名曰欣慶。犯四重禁。來至僧中。九十九夜懺悔自責。罪業即滅戒根即生。如初受戒時無有異也。如人移樹餘處得生。彌更滋長乃得成樹。破戒懺悔亦復如是。爾時破戒比丘。自知犯罪。心生慚愧。轉加苦行。乃經七年。道成羅漢。說是品時。五百破戒比丘。以慚愧故戒根還復。

As stated in the Most Wonderous Initial Teaching Scripture: The Buddha told Śāriputra: “I recall that in the past there was a monk named Xīnqìng. Having committed the four grave prohibitions, he came to the Saṃgha, where for ninety-nine nights he confessed and reproached himself. His sinful karma was immediately extinguished, and the root of his precepts was immediately born, no different from when he first received the precepts. Just as when a person transplants a tree to another place and it is able to live, growing even more luxuriantly until it becomes a full tree, so too is the confession of one who has broken the precepts. At that time, the monk who had broken the precepts knew his own offense, gave rise to shame and remorse in his heart, and increasingly applied himself to austerities; after seven years had passed, he attained arhatship. When this chapter was preached, five hundred monks who had broken the precepts regained their roots of the precepts because of their shame and remorse.”