湛然

《宋高僧傳》記其出身不在釋門：「家本儒、墨，我獨有邁俗之志，童丱邈焉異於常倫。」〔T50n2061 0739b17〕「年二十餘，受經於左溪，與之言，大駭。」〔T50n2061 0739b18〕異日左溪問其所夢，對曰：「疇昔夜夢披僧服，掖二輪，遊大河之中。」〔T50n2061 0739b19〕左溪曰：「嘻，汝當以止、觀二法度群生於生死淵乎？」〔T50n2061 0739b21〕「乃授以本師所傳止觀。」〔T50n2061 0739b22〕其時猶處士也，至「天寶初年，解逢掖而登僧籍。」〔T50n2061 0739b25〕方為僧——先得法而後受形，一宗之傳於是不由門第而由所解。

The Song Lives of Eminent Monks records that he did not come out of a Buddhist household: "his family was Confucian and Mohist by descent, yet he alone had a resolve that went past the common world, and from childhood he was remote and unlike ordinary company" 〔T50n2061 0739b17〕. "In his twenties he received the scriptures from Zuoxi, and when Zuoxi spoke with him he was greatly startled" 〔T50n2061 0739b18〕. Another day Zuoxi asked him what he had dreamed, and he answered: "Some nights back I dreamed I put on a monk's robe and carried two wheels under my arms, travelling in the middle of a great river" 〔T50n2061 0739b19〕. Zuoxi said: "Ah — you are the one to ferry living beings out of the abyss of birth-and-death by the two methods of calming and contemplation" 〔T50n2061 0739b21〕. "He then transmitted to him the calming-and-contemplation handed down from his own master" 〔T50n2061 0739b22〕. At that time he was still a layman; only "in the first year of Tianbao did he loosen the scholar's gown and enter the monastic register" 〔T50n2061 0739b25〕 and become a monk — the Dharma first and the form afterwards, so that in this school the transmission ran not by standing but by what a man had understood.

「無何，朗師捐代，挈《密藏》獨運於東南」〔T50n2061 0739b28〕，謂門人曰：「道之難行也，我知之矣。」〔T50n2061 0739b29〕其所以不得不出者，在一時之病：「今之人或蕩於空，或膠於有，自病病他，道用不振。將欲取正，捨予誰歸？」〔T50n2061 0739c02〕於是「乃祖述所傳章句凡十數萬言。」〔T50n2061 0739c05〕本登錄所繫《釋籤》《文句記》《輔行》即在其中。朝士梁肅為之作辭，其題目云：「自智者以法傳灌頂，頂再世至于左溪，明道若昧，待公而發。乘此寶乘，煥然中興。」〔T50n2061 0740a05〕

"Before long master Lang departed the age, and he carried the secret store alone into the southeast" 〔T50n2061 0739b28〕, saying to his students: "That the Way is hard to practise — this I now know" 〔T50n2061 0739b29〕. What made it impossible for him to stay back was the sickness of that hour: "The men of today either drift loose in emptiness or are glued fast to existence; sick themselves, they sicken others, and the working of the Way does not rouse. If it is to be set right, to whom shall it fall if not to me?" 〔T50n2061 0739c02〕. And so "he set forth in succession the chapters and phrases he had received, some hundreds of thousands of words" 〔T50n2061 0739c05〕 — among them the three works entered in this register. The court scholar Liang Su wrote a piece for him whose colophon says: "From the Wise One the Dharma passed to Guanding, and from Guanding through two generations to Zuoxi; the illumination of the Way was as if darkened, and it waited upon this man to be kindled. Mounting this jewelled vehicle, it shone out in restoration" 〔T50n2061 0740a05〕.

臨終之語不說事而說法：「道無方，性無體，生歟死歟，其旨一貫。」〔T50n2061 0739c13〕又舉一宗之要以付學徒：「夫一念無相謂之空，無法不備謂之假，不一不異謂之中，在凡為三因，在聖為三德。」〔T50n2061 0739c15〕末乃結之曰：「爇炷則初後同相，涉海則淺深異流，自利利人，在此而已。爾其志之！」〔T50n2061 0739c17〕

His last words spoke not of his affairs but of the Dharma: "The Way has no quarter and the nature has no body; living or dying, the purport runs through as one" 〔T50n2061 0739c13〕. Then he handed the essential of the school to his students: "A single thought without mark is called empty; that no dharma is left out of it is called provisional; that these are neither one nor different is called the middle. In the ordinary man they are the three causes; in the sage they are the three virtues" 〔T50n2061 0739c15〕. And he closed with this: "In the burning of a wick, first and last share one mark; in the crossing of a sea, shallow and deep are different currents. To benefit oneself and to benefit others lies in just this. Set your minds upon it!" 〔T50n2061 0739c17〕.