50. T'an-yung
[OMITTED]
The nun T'an-yung (Courageous in the Dharma) (d. 501) of
Voice of the Teaching Convent
T'an-yung was the elder sister of the nun T'an-chien (no. 46). By
nature she was firm in her principles, unswayed by any outside circumstance.
Always considering the practice of meditation and the
strict observance of the monastic rules as her duty, she never thought
of food and clothing as matters for her concern. She lived in Voice of
the Teaching Convent, where she deeply comprehended the Buddhist
teaching of impermanence and highly venerated the joy of cessation in
nirvana.
In the first year of the chien-wu reign period (494), she moved to
White Mountain together with T'an-chien, and, on the night of the fifteenth
day of the second month of the third year of the yung-yüan
reign period (501), she piled up firewood and burned up her body as
an offering to the Buddha.[75] Those who saw and heard her at that
time all aspired to attain Buddhist enlightenment, and together they
built a tomb to bury her remains that they had gathered up.
[75]
Chinese Buddhists traditionally accepted either the eighth or the fifteenth
day of the second month as the day of the Buddha's final nirvana. Also
see introduction.
