11. Ling-tsung
[OMITTED]
The nun Ling-tsung (Esteemed Lineage) of West Convent of
Ssu Province
Ling-tsung's secular surname was Man. Her [family's] original home
was Chin-hsiang in Kao-p'ing Commandery [in northeast China].[85]
While she was yet a child, Ling-tsung had a pure faith [in Buddhism],
and the villagers in the area praised her for it. Her family met
with disaster, being driven away from their homeland by invading
nomadic tribes.[86] Ling-tsung, with utmost sincerity and complete
faith, called on the spiritual power of the Three Treasures for help.[87]
She also received the Universal Gate chapter [of the Flower of the Law
in order to ask for help from the bodhisattva Kuan-yin].
[88] She plucked
out her eyebrows and pretended to her captors that she had a loathsome
disease. Pleading thus, she attained her release.
Retracing the road they had traveled, she went back toward the
south, but, going through the province of Chi [still far north] of her
home, she was pursued once more, this time by bandits.[89] She climbed
to the top of a dead tree and concentrated all her faculties [in accordance
with the Buddhist Way]. Those seeking to capture her looked all
around but never looked up. Having searched and searched without
finding her, they suddenly left. Ling-tsung climbed down and went on
her way again.
She dared not beg for food and at first did not even feel hungry. One
evening she came to Meng Ford [on the Yellow River], but there was
no boat to ferry her across.[90] In great trepidation she again called on
the Three Treasures. Suddenly Ling-tsung saw a white deer that came
from out of nowhere and crossed over the river.[91] Sand and soil rose
up behind the animal, and there were no waves at all. Following the
deer, she crossed the river without getting wet, walking as easily as on
dry land.[92] Thus she was able to return home.
Ling-tsung then entered religious life. With sincere heart and profound
scholarship her study and practice were the essence of earnestness;
she was widely read in the scriptures, and her deep comprehension
entered the realm of the divine. When Emperor Hsiao-wu of Chin
(362-373-396) heard of her reputation, he sent a letter from [his capital
in the south all the way to her northern home] to communicate his
respect for her.[93]
Later on, during a time when the people suffered a plague and the
destitute were numerous, Ling-tsung unstintingly helped, begging
everywhere for alms. She fled neither obstacles nor distances to do
what she could to help the needy; those who relied on her were many.
Because she herself also endured hunger and privation, her own
appearance became haggard and careworn.
When she was seventy-five years old, she unexpectedly summoned
her disciples one morning to tell them about a dream she had had the
previous night. She said, "I saw a large mountain, the one called
Sumeru, whose unusually beautiful peaks reached as high as the sky.
Decorations and embellishments of precious ornaments glowed like
the shining sun. The drum of the Buddha's law reverberated; fragrant
incense filled the air. When spoken words commanded me to go forward,
I was startled awake, but immediately I felt physically quite different
from usual. Although I had no pain, it was as though I was in a
swoon."
[94] Tao-chin, a companion [in the Way of the Buddha], said to
her, "This is surely the Western Paradise of Amita Buddha."
[95] This
conversation had not come to an end when suddenly Ling-tsung's
spirit shifted from this world to the next.
[96]
[85]
Kao-p'ing, in present-day Shantung Province. See map.
[86]
Invading nomadic tribes: lit. slaves.
[87]
These are the Buddha, his teaching or law, and the monastic assemblies.
[88]
Universal Gate chapter is also known as the Bodhisattva Kuan-shih-yin
chapter, found in the Flower of the Law Scripture.
[89]
Province of Chi, in the present-day Hopei and Shansi provinces and
Honan north to the Yellow River. See map.
[90]
Meng Ford, a crossing of the Yellow River, is a good distance west of
her home and suggests that she returned by a very circuitous route. See map.
[91]
The white deer is an auspicious omen, often associated with Taoists.
Lao-tzu is said to have ridden a white deer. (T'ai-p'ing yü lan, chüan 906, p.
5). The interaction between animals and people indicates the holiness of the
person, or his own immortality. Tigers also often help people who are holy
and sincere.
[92]
As on dry land. This, too, is in response to her faith and can be attributed,
at least in part, to the bodhisattva Kuan-shih-yin. (See T. 9, no. 263,
128.c.29-129.a.l.)
[93]
Emperor Hsiao-wu (Chin shu, chap. 9; Wei shu, chap. 96). Third son
of Emperor Chien-wen.
[94]
Sumeru is the central axis of the cosmos in Indian and therefore in Buddhist
cosmology.
[95]
The text does not specifically say Amita, but he is implied because as
the Buddha of Infinite Light, Amitābha, or Infinite Life, Amitāyus, he presides
over the Western Paradise, a place from which it is impossible to fall again
into rebirth. One who achieves birth in this paradise waits there, seated in a
lotus blossom, for his final nirvana, but in the popular mind, the Western Paradise
is in itself the final goal. No women come to birth in the Western Paradise
because, if they have attained enough merit to gain such a birth, they also
have attained enough merit to be born there in a male body.
[96]
One of the several picturesque expressions used in the Chinese Buddhist
biographies to say that a person died. This expression is also Taoist, the character
ch'ien having as one of its components the flapping of wings like a bird,
and one who gets wings and can fly is an immortal. In the early Han dynasty
an immortal is one who becomes a bird. See Kaltenmark's preface to his translation
of Le Lie-sien tchouan, p. 10.
