<Previous Section>
<Next Section>

卷三傳十二集善寺慧緒尼

慧緒。本姓周。閭丘高平人也。為人高率疏遠。見之如丈夫不似婦人。發言吐論甚自方直。略無所迴避。七歲便蔬食持齋志節勇猛。十八出家住荊州三層寺。戒業具足道俗所美。

時江陵有隱尼。西土德望。見緒而異之。遂忘年契意相攜行道。嘗同居一夏。共習般舟。心形勤苦晝夜不息。

沈攸之為刺史普沙簡僧尼。緒乃避難下都。及沈破敗後復還西。齊太尉大司馬豫章王蕭嶷。以宋昇明末出鎮荊陝。知其有道行迎請入內。備盡四事。時有玄暢禪師。從蜀下荊。 緒就受禪法究極精妙。暢每稱其宿習不淺。緒既善解禪行兼菜蔬勵節。豫章王妃及內眷屬。 敬信甚深從受禪法。每有嚫施。受已隨散。不嘗儲畜意。志高遠都。不以生業關懷蕭。王要共還都。為起精舍在第東田之東。名曰福田寺。常入第行道。

永明九年自稱忽忽苦病亦無正惡。唯不復肯食。顏貌憔瘁苦求還寺。還寺即平愈。旬日中輒復請入。入轉如前。咸不知所以。俄而王薨禍故相續。

武皇帝以東田郊迥更起集善寺。悉移諸尼還集善。而以福田寺別安外國道人阿梨。第中還復供養善讀誦咒。緒自移集善寺以後。足不復入第者數年。時內外既敬重此尼。每勸其暫至後第內。

竺夫人欲建禪齋。遣信先諮請。尼云甚善。貧道年惡。此叚實願一入第與諸夫娘別。既入齋。齋竟自索紙筆作詩曰。世人或不知。呼我作老周。忽請作七日。禪齋不得休(後復有十字道別今忘之)作詩竟言笑接人。了不異常日高傲也。因具敘離云。此叚出寺方為永別。年老無復能入第理。

時體中甚康健。出寺月餘。便云病。乃無有異於恒少日而卒也。是永元元年十一月二十日卒。時年六十九周捨為立序贊。又有德盛尼。德合志同為法眷屬。行道習觀親承音旨也

3.12 (Tsai no.48) Hui-hsü

The nun Hui-hsü (Wisdom's Thread) (431-499) of Collected Goodness Convent

Hui-hsü's secular surname was Chou. Her family was originally from the city of Kao-p'ing in the Lü-ch'iu district [quite far north of the Ch'i capital].

High-minded and distant in character, in physical appearance she looked like a man rather than a woman. Her statements and opinions were extremely straightforward without the slightest circumlocution.

By the time she was seven years old, Hui-hsü ate vegetarian food, observed the fasts, and was resolute in her determination to maintain her chastity. At the age of eighteen she left the secular household life to take up residence in Three-Story Convent of Ching Province [along the Yangtze River, an important center of Buddhism, far to the west of the capital]. Religious and laity alike admired her complete practice of the monastic rules.

At that time in Chiang-ling [the provincial capital of Ching Province], there was an eremitic nun who had a reputation for virtue in those western regions. When she saw Hui-hsü, she regarded her as extraordinary, and therefore, forgetting any difference in age, they together followed the Way of Buddhism. Once they lived together for a summer to practice [the meditation of visualizing the Buddha in one's presence], during which time they carried out austerities of mind and body both day and night without rest.

When Shen Yu-chih (d. 478) was governor of the province he sifted and weeded the monastic communities, at which time Hui-hsü, to avoid the difficulty, fled to the capital. She returned to the west only after the defeat of Shen [during the struggles between the Sung and the eventually victorious Ch'i]. The Ch'i grand general of the army and grand marshal, the prince of Yü-chang, Hsiao I (444-492) [second son of Emperor Kao, first emperor of Ch'i], at the end of the sheng-ming reign period (477-479) of the Sung dynasty, went out as a commander of the garrison for the provinces of Ching and Shan. Knowing of her religious practice, he requested her presence at his residence where he provided her with the four essentials of a monastic.

At that time the master of meditation Hsüan-ch'ang came to Ching from the [far western] province of Shu. He taught methods of meditation to Hui-hsü, who investigated to the utmost their subtle mysteries, causing Hsüan-ch'ang often to praise her depth of mind inherited from experience gained in previous lives. Hui-hsü thus became proficient in meditation as well as continued to maintain her vegetarianism and strict observance of the moral precepts.

The wife of the prince of Yü-chang and other ladies of the royal family were greatly devoted to her and from her received instruction in meditation. Whenever she received donations, she dispersed them to others, never having any intention of keeping them for herself. Hui-hsü, far above such matters, had no concern for her material livelihood.

The prince requested her to return with him to the capital, where, east of the eastern fields of his family's estate, he built for her Field of Blessings Convent. She was frequently invited to the prince's residence to carry out various religious practices.

In the ninth year of the yung-ming reign period (491), Hui-hsü announced that she had suddenly taken very ill, but it was not a genuine disease; it was only that she was no longer willing to eat. When she had become quite haggard and emaciated, she earnestly begged to be able to return to her convent, and as soon as she returned she immediately improved. Ten days later, however, she was again summoned to the prince's residence, and, having once arrived, her illness reappeared as before. No one knew the reason why, but suddenly the prince died (492), and one calamity after another befell his family. Because the eastern estate was in a distant suburb, Emperor Wu (440-483-493) [the prince's elder brother and second emperor of Ch'i], built Collected Goodness Convent and moved all the nuns to this new convent while using Field of Blessings Convent to house the foreign monk ārya. The monk, who received support from the royal family, was good at chanting Buddhist magical spells.

After Hui-hsü herself had moved to Collected Goodness Convent, she did not again set foot in the palace for several years. During that time everyone, both within and without the palace, greatly respected the nun and often urged her to return for short visits to the women's apartments of the palace. Lady Chu wished to hold a religious vegetarian feast and sent a message to invite Hui-hsü to consult with her ahead of time about the affair.

The nun said, "This is very good. Because I am now old, I truly want at this time to visit the palace once more to bid farewell to all the ladies." Thus she attended the vegetarian feast and, when it was over, she asked for paper and brush and wrote a poem:

Worldly people who know me not
Call me by my worldly name of Old Chou.
You invite me to a week-long feast of food,
but the feast of meditation has no end.
(I, Pao-ch'ang, the compiler, note here that there were ten more words in this poem of farewell, but they have been lost.) After she finished the poem, she talked and laughed with the people there and comported herself in no way different from her usual dignity.

She then took her leave, saying, "This time when I go out to the convent, it will be farewell forever. Because I am old, I shall not again be able to enter the palace." She was healthy at that time, but a little over a month after she had gone back to the convent she said she was sick, and, even though she seemed no different from before, she died a few days later on the twentieth day of the eleventh month of the first year of the yung-yüan reign period (499). She was sixty-nine years old. The scholar Chou Sheh (469-524) wrote a statement in praise of her.

The nun Te-sheng was a companion in the Way [of Buddhism], the same in virtue and will, and received Hui-hsü's instruction in religious practice and contemplation.

<Previous Section>
<Next Section>
IATHPublished by The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, © Copyright 2003 by Anne Kinney and the University of Virginia