On the side of the scenic Grand Canal in Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province, there is a small but impressive temple, the Blood Seal Zen Temple, whose traces have touched ancient and modern times.
The Blood Seal Zen Temple is named after a monk who died in the late Ming Dynasty to save the people of Li. This mage did not even leave a name in history, but for hundreds of years, the local people have always felt the compassion and fearlessness of the mage and honored him as "Blood Seal Zen Master" and "Blood Seal Monk".
According to the Qing Dynasty Daoguang Jinshi Cao Guanda's "Blood Seal Stone Pillar Blood Shadow Monk Identification", there is a reddish-brown figure on the stone pillar outside the door of the Zhongwu King Temple in Xiyue Zhongwu In Jiaxing City (that is, the Yue Wang Ancestral Hall built by General Yue Fei Sun Yue Ke, which does not exist today), resembling a monk sitting in meditation. According to his research, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Wokou disturbed the city, robbed dozens of women, and locked up in the temple, and there was a monk in the temple who was compassionate and compassionate, taking advantage of the fact that the Wokou was out, trying to rescue the women who were imprisoned in the temple and instructing them to escape. After that, wokou was furious, bound the monks to the stone pillars, set off arrows and burned them, and blood splashed all over the stone pillars, the scene was tragic, but the monks were still upright. Now the stone pillar in front of the temple can clearly see the peaceful figure of the monk sitting in meditation, the rainy day is dark, the sunny day is red, and the blood stains of hundreds of years are still fresh.
In 1925, the governor of Jiaxing County, The Republic of China, Wei Daofeng, initiated the construction of the Blood Seal Zen Temple, built a temple, wrote articles, carved monuments, praised and carried forward the spirit of loyalty and indomitability, and in 1929 the temple was renamed "Blood Seal Zen Temple", and later changed to "Blood Seal Zen Temple".
In October 1935, Sun Chucheng, a historical and cultural celebrity in Jiaxing, published a travelogue in the "Declaration", which also recorded the story of a group of Shanghainese who traveled to Jiaxing South Lake at that time and went to the Three Pagodas to see the blood seals and the yin, which said: "Ming Jiajing was in the southeast of Wukou, abducted women and children, detained in the temple, the monks heard the sound of weeping, moved bodhi chanting, drunken guards and released them. After the guards woke up, they hated the bones, tied them to the stone square, and burned them to death, and now they are shadows, and they have not retreated for hundreds of years. In the fifteenth year of the Republic of China (1926), when Wei Daofeng was the governor of Jiaxing, after mu Qi's loyalty and righteousness, after the fact that the special monument praised it, the crowd began to realize that because it was related to national nature, the righteousness was in shape, as if it were a threat. ”
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, the Shanghai "Declaration" had a report specifically reporting the story of the Blood Seal Zen Temple to stimulate the people's will to resist the war. Because of this report, a large number of Shanghai people were attracted to the Jiaxing Blood Seal Zen Temple to pay their respects. The Declaration report reads:
"In June of the year of Yi You, Wu Kou came to attack Jiaxing, arrested dozens of women, and locked them up in the Yue Wang Temple at Ximen, intending to show animal lust. The monks in the temple heard about it, and when the monk took advantage of the japanese to go out, he managed to release all the more than ten women. Kou Gui, asking where the women were, said: 'Zhongzhi Yi', the Japanese Kou was furious, and the monks burned them on the stone pillar outside the temple gate, and the fire was extinguished, the monks were killed, and the blood mark was deep inside the stone... In April 1937, Jiaxing Press Photo Agency took a photo, the image has a stone archway, a monk's shadow appears on the stone pillar, the name of the film is called 'Jiaxing Blood Seal Monk', with text, although the image is not very clear, but it is still very clear when you look closely. The film was published in the newspaper, the impact was great, Shanghai is only more than a hundred miles away from Jiaxing, now there is this miracle, Shanghai people are quite curious, have driven to Jiaxing to see this film, Shanghai, Hehe people's hostility and hatred of the emotions multiplied. ”
In 1946, nearly a year after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the poet Yi Junzuo went to the Blood Seal Zen Temple to hang himself, and he had a deep understanding, so he wrote the inscription of The Yang Lian:
"The river is unceasing, standing up to ensure the safety of hundreds of people, why bother to suffer a tragic death, zhiren, courage, faith and truth; the blood seal is still there, the repair of the three pagodas has left tens of millions of years of achievements, early to break through the air and fly away, greed and hatred love without a trace."
During the Cultural Revolution, the Blood Seal Zen Temple was abandoned and became a place for farmers to live and to pile up rice and firewood tools and raise cattle. Later, it became a workshop for playing cotton and sprouts, and also worked as a workshop and a blacksmith shop for grinding tofu and roasting ducks with sauce. It was not until the 1980s that it was revived as a place of official religious activity. Today's Blood Seal Zen Temple covers an area of 1110 square meters, of which the Daxiong Treasure Hall is still a building of the Republic of China period.
The Blood Seal Temple originates from the great compassion story of the monks of the Yue Wang Ancestral Hall who died and saved the lives of the people, and is in line with the loyalty and righteousness of Yue Feijing to the country, and it is also in line with the great compassion bodhichitta of Shakyamuni Buddha's original deeds of sacrificing himself to feed the tiger and cutting the flesh to feed the eagle.
Zen Master Yun of the Great Wisdom Sect: "The faithful are in the midst of adultery, such as the pure Mani orb placed in the mud, although it is a hundred thousand years old, it cannot be polluted." Why? Nature is pure. The adulterer is faithful and righteous, and if the poison is placed in the purifier, although it is a hundred thousand years old, it cannot be changed. Why? The nature is turbid. ...... The loyal and righteous people see righteousness and their nature, and the adulterous people see profits, and if they see profit, they have their own nature, such as magnets meet iron and fire meets dry wages, although they want to be forbidden, they cannot get it. ...... Bodhichitta is loyal to righteousness, and the name is different and the body is the same, but when this mind and righteousness meet, then the world is born in a net, and there is nothing left. ”
The patriotic feelings and loyal hearts of the monks have been integrated since ancient times in the great compassion and bodhichitta of saving the sentient beings and giving up others. Whether it is the fearlessness of the Blood Seal Zen Master to die to save the lives of the heavens, the selflessness of the Silent Zen Master who risked his life to save 20,000 refugees in Nanjing or even the selflessness of the accumulated labor, or the bravery of the monk rescue team directly going to the front line to carry out anti-Japanese rescue, it is all the Buddha's original intention of practicing "loyalty is bodhichitta" in this life.
On the occasion of the National Day of the Nanjing Massacre, I hereby commemorate the Great Compassion Bodhisattva of the Blood Seal Zen Master, and wish to inspire and encourage the disciples of the Buddha not to forget their original intentions, not to give up sentient beings, and to be fearless in return for the four graces (the grace of the land, the grace of parents, the grace of all sentient beings, and the grace of the three treasures)!
