法苑珠林 18.19

18.19

In the Song, the nun Zhitong was a nun at Jianjing Nunnery in the capital. Her age and appearance were youthful and attractive, and her faith in the Way was not firm. In the ninth year of the Yuanjia era, after her master died, she returned to lay life, marrying Liang Xifu of Wei Commandery as a concubine, and gave birth to a boy. When he was seven years old, the family was exceedingly impoverished, having nothing to clothe him with. When Tong had been a nun, she possessed several scrolls of sūtras on plain white silk, such as the Sūtra of Immeasurable Life and the Lotus Sūtra. She boiled, washed, and pounded all of them to make clothes for her child. After one year, she fell ill, becoming delirious and terror-stricken, and her whole body peeled and rotted, resembling fire blisters. Minute white worms, more than a sheng a day, came out of her. In excruciating pain and toxic affliction, she wailed day and night. She constantly heard a voice in the air say: "For destroying sūtras to make clothing, you receive this severe retribution!" In a little over ten days, she died. (The above two verifications are taken from the Mingxiang ji).