法苑珠林 86.7

86.7

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.”