35. Fa-ching
[OMITTED]
The nun Fa-ching (Pure Law) (409-473) of Universal
Wisdom Convent
Fa-ching originally came from north of the Yangtze River. When she
was twenty, her family met with civil disorder, and she accompanied
her father and fled to Mo-ling [which was in the vicinity of the capital
of the Sung dynasty].
The family practiced the religion of Shākyamuni Buddha. Fa-ching
left the household life while still very young and dwelled in Eternal
Blessings Convent. Her observance of the monastic rules was unsullied;
she understood the principles of things; she immersed her
thought in subtleties and deeply probed profundities. Her reputation
was comparable to Pao-hsien's (no. 34).
Emperor Ming of Sung (439-465-472) considered her above the
ordinary, and, in the first year of the t'ai-shih reign period (465), he
decreed by imperial order that she live in Universal Wisdom Convent.[128]
Within the royal palace she was warmly received and respected
as both teacher and friend. In the second year (466) she was
made, by imperial decree, the director of conventual affairs in the capital.[129]
In her work she was most impartial and just; her influence
spread out in waves, and those converted by her virtue were like a torrent.
Of all the women of the surrounding territory of Ching and
Ch'u, both nuns and other women who could claim any association
through family connections, there was none who did not send letters
from afar, seeking her acquaintance.
The formative power of her moral excellence was always like this,
and those who consulted her as a model for the observance of the
monastic rules numbered seven hundred persons.
Fa-ching died in the first year of the yüan-hui reign period (473) at
age 65.
[128]
Emperor Ming. See chap. 2 n. 121, biography 34.
[129]
The director of conventual affairs or precentor was in charge of the
routines of the convent. Only the Assembly of Nuns was under Fa-ching's authority.
