36. Hui-yao
[OMITTED]
The nun Hui-yao (Glorious Wisdom) of Eternal Quietude
Convent in Shu Commandery [in the west, far upriver from the
capital]
Hui-yao's secular surname was Chou. Her family was originally from
Hsi-p'ing [in southwest China].
Hui-yao, who left the household life while still a child, always
vowed to burn her body as a worship offering to the Three Treasures.[130]
At the end of the t'ai-shih reign period (465-471), she spoke
about her intention to the governor, Liu Liang (d. 472), who at first
gave permission.[131] Hui-yao asked to be able to carry out her self-immolation
on the top of the tile pagoda that belonged to Madame
Wang, a concubine of a certain Chao Ch'u-ssu. Madame Wang gave
her approval, and on the full-moon night of the fifteenth day of the
first month [the day of the Lantern Festival], Hui-yao, carrying cloth
and oil, led her disciples to the pagoda.[132] They had not finished the
preparations, however, when Liu Liang sent a letter addressed to the
nuns saying, "If Hui-yao succeeds in her intention to burn herself up
as an offering, then Eternal Quietude Convent will incur a grave
offence." Hui-yao had no choice but to stop her preparations.
Madame Wang, very angry, said, "That nun, wanting fame and
profit, deceitfully indulged in unusual behavior, bribing her cronies to
do a thing like this. If that were not the case, how could someone in
the city, at midnight no less, know anything about it?"
Hui-yao [responded to the charge], "Madame, do not engage in
such confused thought. Abandoning my body is my concern. How
could others know?" Thereupon she returned to the convent, where
she gave up eating cereals, consuming instead fragrant oils [as
described in the chapter on the Medicine King bodhisattva in the
Flower of the Law], until the first year of the sheng-ming reign period
(477), when she offered her body by fire at the convent. Even when
the flames had reached as high as her face, she continued to chant
scriptures without ceasing.
She said to all the nuns, "Gather up the bones I leave. There should
be exactly two pints." After the fire had gone out, the result was as she
had said it would be.
A month and some days before her self-immolation, there appeared
in the region a foreign monk, about twenty years old, who, although
of most proper appearance, had extremely fine, soft, black hair growing
on his shoulders to the length of six or seven inches. When people
asked about the strange phenomenon, he answered, through an interpreter,
"Because I have never covered my shoulders hair has grown
there."
He said to Hui-yao, "I live in Varanasi [that is, central India] but
have been here quite a few days. I heard that you intend to abandon
your body. Therefore I want to give you a silver jug." Hui-yao received
it with the utmost respect, but, before she could find out more about
him, the foreign monk departed in a great hurry. She sent people to
follow and bring him back, but he had already gone out the city gate
and disappeared. The silver jug was used to hold the sharīra [the
pearl-like relics of sanctity], recovered from Hui-yao's bones. The
relics came to not quite a fifth of a pint.[133]
[130]
These are the Buddha, his teaching, and the assemblies of monks and
nuns.
[131]
Liu Liang, governor of I Province in western China, the territory of
Shu, died in 472 after eating Taoist medicines of immortality and was afterward
seen riding a white horse going off to the west. In other words, he
became a Taoist immortal (Sung shu, chap. 5; Nan shih, chap. 2).
[132]
The Lantern Festival is a Buddhist festival of Chinese origin. According
to tradition, when Buddhism first came to China, there was a trial with the
Taoists and other worshippers who offered sacrifices to local gods. The scriptures
of the Buddhists and Taoists were placed on two separate altars and the
offerings to the spirits placed on a third. All were set on fire, but only the Buddhist
scriptures were not consumed. The date for this trial was the fifteenth
day of the first month, and every year afterward the people would light lamps
to honor the light of the Buddha's teaching. See
Fo tsu t'ung chi, p. 318.c.2529;
Ta sung seng shih lüeh, p. 254.b-c (which gives the
Han fa nei pen chuan
as its source);
Kuang hung ming chi, 98.c.-99.b; and others. It would not be
surprising that the
Han fa nei pen chuan were the source of all subsequent versions.
For a description of this festival during T'ang times, see
Ennin's Diary,
pp. 71-73.
This contest reminds one of the contest between the prophet Elijah and the
priests of Baal (I Kings 18:31-39).
[133]
Sharīra are little pellets thought to be found in the ashes of holy persons
who have been cremated. The holier the person, the more sharīra will be
found. Most Chinese Buddhists, however, were not cremated. Relics of the
Buddha himself are found throughout the Buddhist world, similar to the widespread
distribution of the relics of the True Cross throughout the Christian
world.
