法苑珠林 64.78

64.78

Shi Jizang, the Great Monk Overseer of the Silla Kingdom under the Tang, was surnamed Kim by birth and was a native of Silla. Having passed the age of primary schooling, his divine intelligence was serene and uncomplicated. Disdaining worldly high honors, his heart delighted beyond the mundane sphere. Alone and quiet, he practiced meditation, not shunning tigers or rhinoceroses. Holding precepts beyond the ordinary, compassionate rescue came first for him. Deeply secluded in mountain retreats, when passing through and running out of provisions, he moved extraordinary birds to each hold various fruits in their beaks and deliver them directly into his hands, the birds eating together with him from Jizang's hand. When the time came, it was always so, never missing a beat. His conduct moved mysterious portents such that few could equal him. Yet, constantly harboring sorrow, he showed compassionate pity toward sentient beings, wondering by what skillful means he might free them from birth and death. Thereupon, in his sleep, he saw two men who said: 'You dwell in seclusion; what benefit do you seek to achieve?' Jizang said: 'Only to benefit sentient beings.' They then conferred the five precepts upon Jizang, saying: 'You may take these five precepts to benefit sentient beings.' They further addressed Jizang: 'We have come from the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven specifically to confer the precepts upon you.' Thereupon, they soared into the sky and vanished. Then he left the mountains; endless men and women throughout the kingdom received the precepts from him. In the twelfth year of Zhenguan, he arrived in the Tang realm. After reaching the capital, he compassionately benefited the multitudes; those who received the precepts from him were numbered by the thousands daily. The blind regained sight of the path, and the sick were healed. Furthermore, delighting in tranquility during the summer retreat, he submitted an imperial petition to spend three summer retreats at Yunjiji Temple. He saw great ghosts and spirits, innumerable in quantity, wearing armor and holding weapons, who said: 'Take this golden carriage to welcome Jizang.' He also saw a great deity fighting with them, resisting and refusing to let them take him. Jizang smelled a foul odor billowing and filling the valley, so he went to his rope bed and announced his farewells. One of his disciples was also struck by a ghost and nearly died before reviving. Jizang then gave away his robes and bowl to give alms to the wandering saṃgha. He also smelled a fragrance pervading his body and mind. The deity said to Jizang: 'Now you shall not die; you will live over eighty years.' In the seventeenth year, he returned to his home country, fully implementing the Buddhist teachings just as in the great realm. The king invited him to Hwangnyongsa to lecture on the Bodhisattva Prātimokṣa; for seven days and seven nights, sweet dew fell from the sky, and clouds, mists, and lightning overcast the lecture hall. The fourfold assembly was astonished and sighed in praise, his fine reputation spreading ever further. Due to a minor illness, he passed away in the Yonghui era (these three evidences above are taken from the Tang Biographies of Eminent Monks).