法苑珠林 79.44

79.44

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.