3.14 (Tsai no.50) T'an-yung
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.
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.
Published
by The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, © Copyright 2003
by Anne Kinney and the University of Virginia