University of Virginia Library

37. Fa-yüan

[OMITTED]

The nun Fa-yüan (Affinity with the Law) (424/426-479/482) of
Tseng-ch'eng in Tung-kuan [in south China]

Fa-yüan's secular surname was Lun. She was from Tseng-ch'eng [in
Tung-kuan in south China].[1]

In the ninth year of the yüan-chia reign period (432) of the Sung
dynasty, Fa-yüan was ten years old, and her sister Fa-ts'ai was nine. At
that time they knew nothing of the teachings or scriptures of Buddhism.
In that year, the eighth day of the second month [the day commemorating
the Buddha's final nirvana], both sisters disappeared.
Three days later they reappeared saying that they had reached the
heavenly palace of the Pure Land and had seen the Buddha, who had
converted them.

On the fifteenth day of the ninth month [the full-moon day], they
disappeared again for ten days before returning.[2] After that sojourn
they were able to speak and write a foreign language as well as chant
Buddhist scriptures. When they chanced to see anyone from the foreign
lands to the west of China, they bantered with them, communicating
with them fluently.

In the tenth year (433), on the fifteenth day of the first month [the
day of the Lantern Festival], they vanished once again.[3] People working
in the fields saw the two girls blown whirling by a wind up to the
sky. Their parents, worried and afraid, petitioned the spirits with sacrifice
for the happy fortune of the sisters' return, but it was a month
before they came back.

When the two sisters returned, they had already embraced the

monastic life, signified by their wearing monastic robes and carrying
their cut-off hair. They reported that they had seen the Buddha and
also a nun who had said, "Because of affinities established between us
in a previous life, you should become my disciples." She rubbed their
heads with her hands, and their hair fell out of its own accord. The
nun bestowed religious names on them, calling the elder sister Fa-yüan
and the younger Fa-ts'ai. On the point of sending them back, the nun
said, "You should build a monastic dwelling, and I shall give you
scriptures."

When Fa-yüan and her sister returned home, they demolished the
altar to the spirits and in its place built a monastic dwelling where they
discussed and chanted scriptures day and night. Every evening multicolored
lights, as though from lanterns or candles, played over the
mountain peaks. From this time forward the sisters' demeanor was
elegant and their speech correct and clear. The chanting in the capital
itself could not surpass theirs.

The provincial governors Wei Lang and K'ung Mo both humbly
made offerings, and, when they heard the two sisters' speech, they
even more deeply honored the nuns' unusual quality. Because of this
all the people in the region served the True Law of the Buddha.

Fa-yüan died at the age of fifty-six in the chien-yüan reign period
(479-482).