55. Nun Feng
[OMITTED]
Nun Feng (409-504) of Capital Office Convent in the illegitimate
kingdom of Kao-ch'ang[44]
Nun Feng[45] was a native of Kao-ch'ang [in the far northwest].[46]
Because the people there respected her very much, they called her by
her original surname of Feng. When she was thirty years old she
became a nun in Capital Office Convent in Kao-ch'ang. She ate vegetables
for her one meal a day, and her observance of the monastic rules
was very strict. As an offering to the Buddha she burned six fingers
down to the palms of her hands.[47] She was able to chant through the
entire Great Final Nirvāna Scripture in only three days.[48]
At that time there was a master of the law Fa-hui (d. ca. 500),
whose vigor in the practice of religion surpassed all others.[49] He was
the chaplain for all the nuns in the kingdom of Kao-ch'ang.
Later, for she was the chaplain's spiritual friend of good discernment
and influence, Nun Feng suddenly said to Fa-hui, "You, āchārya,
are not yet perfect.[50] You may go to the kingdom of Kucha in central
Asia to Gold Flower Monastery, where you should listen to the
monk Chih-yüeh, and then you will surely attain the superlative
teaching."[51]
Fa-hui heeded her advice and went to that monastery to see Chih-yüeh,
who delighted by his arrival, gave him a pint of grape wine and
bid him to drink.
Fa-hui, startled, said, "I have come to seek the superlative teaching,
but instead you have offered me that which is unlawful and that which
I am therefore not willing to drink."
Chih-yüeh pushed him around and quickly ordered him to leave.
Fa-hui thought to himself, "Because I have come a long way but have
not yet come so far as to understand the purpose of this, perhaps I
should not disobey," and gulped it down. Drunk, he vomited and,
dazed and confused, passed out, while Chih-yüeh betook himself elsewhere.
When Fa-hui regained consciousness, realizing that he had violated
the monastic rule against drinking wine, in his great shame he
struck himself and, in penance for what he had done, wished to take
his own life. As a consequence of this reflection he attained the third
fruit [of Buddhist practice].[52]
Chih-yüeh returned and asked him, "Have you got it now?"[53]
Fa-hui replied, "Yes," whereupon he returned to Kao-ch'ang.
Fa-hui was still over two hundred Chinese miles away when, without
advance verbal or written news of his impending arrival, Nun
Feng summoned the Assembly of Nuns to go out to wait for him.
Examples of her foreknowledge were all like this.
All the nuns of Kao-ch'ang revered Nun Feng as a teacher. When
she was ninety-six years old, she died in the third year of the t'ien-chien
reign period (504) of the Liang dynasty.
[44]
Illegitimate because it was non-Chinese.
[45]
Nun Feng. This biography has been translated in Buddhist Texts
through the Ages, pp. 293-295.
[46]
Kao-ch'ang, a central Asian kingdom in present-day Hsinchiang Province,
T'u-lu-fan County. See map.
[47]
This practice, together with the burning of an arm or of one's whole
body in honor of the Buddha, was inspired by the Flower of the Law Scripture,
a Buddhist scripture immensely popular in China (see bibliography
under Flower of the Law Scripture for Miao fa lien hua ching, 53.b-54.a; and
Cheng fa hua ching, 125.b-126.a). A photograph of this type of mutilation in
honor of the Buddha appears in Prip-Møller, Chinese Buddhist Monasteries,
p. 322. The origins of the sacrifice by fire are difficult to trace. It is not originally
a Buddhist phenomenon. One theory about its appearance in the Flower
of the Law Scripture is that that part of the scripture was composed to exhort
greater faith in the face of troubles. Another is that it is a vivid way to describe
the yogic experience of heat and ecstasy. See, e.g., Eliade Myths, Dreams, and
Mysteries, pp. 146-149. Also in the biography of the monk Fa-hsien in Kao
seng Fa Hsien chuan (T. 51, no. 2085, 862.a.13-20) we read of the death of
Ānanda whose body was spontaneously consumed by fire while he was in the
"fire-ray" samādhi. Afterward he divided the remains into two parts and distributed
them. Also see A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, pp. 75-77. The
possibility of influence of Middle Eastern fire cults cannot be overlooked.
[48]
This is another example of the remarkable speed with which some of
the nuns were able to chant scriptures.
[49]
A partial biography of Fa-hui appears in Pao-ch'ang's Meisōden-shō
(Lives of famous monks). In that biography we learn that Fa-hui, in his youth,
enjoyed hunting, archery, drinking, and singing and that he was married, his
wife being the most beautiful woman in the country. But he got into an
unpleasant scrape and fled to the country of Kucha. Once there, he was apparently
converted and wanted to become a Buddhist monk, but he had no
money to buy monastic robes. A foreigner had died, and Fa-hui followed the
family to the graveyard. After they had left, he wanted to take the dead man's
clothing, which was of excellent quality, but first had to struggle with the
ghost. He overcame the ghost, stole the clothing, sold it, and used the money
to buy monastic robes. He progressed well in the monastic life and eventually
returned to Kao-ch'ang, where he earned much respect and became the chaplain
of the nuns. The account of his trip back to Kucha to see the monk Chih-yüeh
is essentially the same as in Nun Feng's biography, with this addition:
when Chih-yüeh offers him the wine, Fa-hui also thinks to himself that he has
been living a pure life for a long time, a reference of course to his profligate
youth that he had left behind. Fa-hui's own biography finishes up by saying
that after his return to Kao-ch'ang he was very influential in the whole region,
spreading the Buddhist religion very successfully, and that everyone looked up
to him (
Meisōden-shō, chap. 25).
[50]
Āchārya is a Sanskrit word meaning master or teacher.
[51]
Chih-yüeh, known only in this biography and in the biography of
Fa-hui in Pao-ch'ang's Meisōden-shō (Lives of famous monks).
[52]
The third fruit (anāgāmin) is that of never again being reborn on earth,
but rather in a heaven from whence one can reach final enlightenment.
[53]
This story has the flavor of the later masters of the Ch'an, or Zen, sect,
with their unorthodox teaching methods that included, at times, deliberately
breaking one or more of the precepts. The actual verbal exchange between
Chih-yüeh and Fa-hui is also full of the flavor of Ch'an. When Chih-yüeh
asks, "Have you got it?" Fa-hui does not have to ask what it is he is supposed
to have.
