Chapter 89 take refuge

Li Shutong was weak and sick since he was a child, and he thought he could not live a long life. He once revealed his idea of ​​becoming a monk in "Title of Chen Shizeng's Painting "Lotus Small"": "A flower and a leaf, the solitary fragrance is clean. The obscurity is not stained, and the achievement of wisdom." Li Shutong suffered from neurasthenia when he was 20 years old, and it has become more serious since then.After working part-time in Nanjing Normal University, he traveled between Hangzhou, Shanghai and Nanjing, exhausted physically and mentally.Someone made a fortune teller for him, saying that in the year of Bingchen (1916), there should be a big calamity.As his physical condition deteriorated over the years, he believed in this prophecy even more. At the beginning of 1916, he made a seal for this moment: "The year of Bingchen Xiweng's death".

In the last two or three years of teaching in Zhejiang First Division, Li Shutong began to believe in Taoism. He often kept Taoism on his desk, and became reclusive, closing the door to study Taoism.His "life gradually converges, as if a person is about to leave for a distant place." Once, a celebrity in the school came to give a speech, but Li Shutong and Xia Mianzun hid in Huxin Pavilion to drink tea.Xia said: "It's good for people like us to become monks!" This sentence greatly touched Li Shutong. Xia Mianzun once introduced an article about fasting to Li Shutong, in which it was said that fasting is a cultivation method of "renewing" the body and mind. In the winter of 1916, Li Shutong, who was teaching at the Nanjing Higher Normal School, used the winter vacation to go to Hupao Temple in Dacishan, Hangzhou, and fasted for 20 days.After fasting, he felt reborn, so he called himself "Li Ying" (note: taken from Lao Tzu's phrase "can you be a baby").

Xia Mianzun recalled that Li Shutong "gradually reduced his food in the first week to the end, in the second week he did not eat at all except water, and from the third week onwards, he gradually increased from porridge and soup to a constant amount." After three weeks, Li felt as if he had been completely reborn. Pain, but the body and mind feel light, and there is a sense of ecstasy. What is especially incredible is that he recovered from the neurasthenia that had plagued him for many years.During the fasting period, Li liked the way of life of the monks very much, and he was really envious, and he also had a good impression of vegetarianism.After returning to school, although Li lived as usual, he began to become a vegetarian and chant Buddhist scriptures, and his words showed a sharp edge.This fasting led to his renunciation.

Li Shutong said in the book: "In the second half of the sixth year of the Republic of China (1917), I became determined to be a vegetarian. In winter, I invited many scriptures, such as "Psalmite Walking Vows", "Surangama "Sutra" and "Mahayana Awakening of Faith" and many other Buddhist scriptures, and I also set up Buddha statues in my room. For example, the statues of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva and Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, so I burn incense every day. It is the annual holiday of this year. At that time, I did not go home, but went to Hupao Temple to celebrate the new year."

Li Shutong took a photo during fasting, and later made this photo into a postcard and sent it to friends inside and outside the party. After Li Shutong fasted and returned to school, he began to wear the clothes of a monk, chanted sutras and became a vegetarian every day.Seeing Li Shutong's "decline in the world", Xia Mianzun became anxious, and blurted out: "It's not thorough after all. It's refreshing to simply become a monk!" Xia Ben's words were indignant, and Li Shutong smiled at him.How did Xia Mianzun know that he already had this intention. On the eighth day of the first lunar month in 1918, Li Shutong re-entered Hupao Dinghui Temple as a lay Buddhist to practice meditation. It happened that Ma Yifu introduced his friend Peng Xunzhi to become a monk. In July, after the end of the school's teaching affairs, Li Shutong officially became a monk in Hupao Temple. He became a shaving master according to the enlightenment of the master, and his dharma name was Yanyin, and his name was Hongyi.

Before Hongyi left school, he gave all his collections, money, and clothing to his friends: gold watches, poems, calligraphy scrolls, and precious souvenirs were all left to Xia Mianzun.Music, painting, drama, and photos collected before becoming a monk were distributed to Feng Zikai, Liu Zhiping, Wang Pingling, Li Hongliang, etc. according to the interests of the students; clothing and supplies were left for school workers; pianos, calligraphy, paintings, and accessories at home in Shanghai , money, all left to the Japanese wife Fuji; gold and stone works, all donated to "Xiling Yinshe"; oil paintings donated to the National Beijing Academy of Fine Arts.

On the eve of his departure, Li Shutong did not forget to write the epitaph for Jiang Danshu's mother. This matter had already been agreed, but he had not written it yet.It was night, touched by the mourning for his deceased mother, Li Shutong had mixed feelings, and the epitaph was written overnight, signed "Daci Yanyin".In the morning of the next day, Li quietly left, and when Jiang Danshu came to send it off, there was only a mourning letter on the case left in the room. Wenyu Li Shutong, a janitor of the First Division of Zhejiang Province, went to Hupao Temple. Li Shutong took out a piece of Haiqing and put it on. The purpose of this trip was shocked when he saw this situation, and wept bitterly for a while.According to Jiang Dan's records: After Li Shutong changed into a monk's robe, he called Wenyu a "layman" and called himself a "little monk". He asked Wenyu to sit down and made tea for Wenyu, and Wenyu was restless.Then Li put on the straw sandals and began to clean the room. Wen Yu wanted to help him, but was rejected; he spread the bed boards himself, Wen Yu forced to help, but was rejected again.Wen Yu cried bitterly and couldn't bear to leave. Li Shutong comforted him repeatedly. It was not until evening that Wen Yu left reluctantly.

Feng Zikai recalled in the article "Speaking of Master Hongyi for the Youth": "The night before he became a monk, he asked me, my classmates Ye Tianrui and Li Zengyong, to go to his room and gave us all the things in the room. The next day, the three of us sent him to Hupao. We came back and got his "inheritance". When we went to visit him again, he was already bare-skinned and dressed in a monk's robe. Call him 'Mage'." Li Shutong once expressed his determination to practice in a letter to Liu Zhiping: "If you are not a sycophant, your life will not last forever, and your sins have been so deep since beginningless time, so you have to practice quickly. Since then, I have been influenced by Ma Yifu, and I have gradually learned a lot. Enlightenment. The taste of the world is getting weaker, and there are many jobs. If you ask for leave recently, if you force yourself to delay the time, you will be ridiculed for absenteeism on the outside and suffer from guilt on the inside.”

Xia Mianzun deeply regretted his original actions in an article: "In the past seven years, he (Li Shutong) wanted to leave Hangzhou First Division three or four times, sometimes because he was unhappy with the school authorities, and sometimes because he was invited elsewhere. He wanted to leave several times, but he gave up after my persuasion. There was even a period when the Nanjing Higher Teachers begged him to take a class. He had already accepted the letter of appointment. So I ran between Hangzhou and Nanjing, and I had to travel by night train several times a week.... I deeply regret that I should not have kept him in the past. If he had left Hangzhou earlier, maybe he would not have encountered such a complicated relationship.”