When we describe a person's birth, we most often say "croaking to the ground", that is, from the moment it is born in the mother's belly, we will cry.
But the Void Cloud Monk may really have the cause of a past life, and his birth method is different.
The old monk Wuyun is the most famous monk in modern times, his lay family was originally surnamed Xiao, his ancestral home was Xiangxiang, Hunan Province, his father went to Fujian to become a small official, and Qianyun was born in Quanzhou, Fujian.
In 1840, the twentieth year of Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty, the mother of the monk Wuyun became pregnant, his father was the prefect of Quanzhou at the time, and his mother also lived in Yamen.
In the early morning of July 30 of that year, the mother had a stomachache and was about to give birth, until Yin, the "child" was finally born. But the mother wondered, why did she not hear her son's cry?
The midwife was in a daze at that time, because the prefect gave birth to not a child, but a ball of meat, and it was impossible to see the human form at all, let alone hear the baby's cry.
When the mother saw this scene, she was shocked, and then she was sad, she couldn't imagine that she had worked hard to conceive in October, and gave birth to such a monster, this shock, and died without coming up in one breath.
Before my father could enjoy the joy of becoming a father for the first time, he lost his beloved wife, not to mention, and he had to face this meat ball, and he didn't know how to deal with it. Even after asking the local elders overnight, they had never seen such a strange thing, so they didn't know how to deal with it.
After dawn, my father also thought that the meat ball was a bad omen, and decided to bury it in a box. At this time, an old man selling medicine from other places came and volunteered to enter the Yamen and said that he could handle it.
In front of Lord Prefect, he took out a knife from the medicine sac, cut open the meat ball at once, and immediately heard a loud baby cry - a fat boy came out of the meat ball, this is the later Void Cloud monk.
Because her mother died after giving birth, Qiuyun was given to the side royal lady to raise.
So, under the careful upbringing of his stepmother, Wuyun slowly grew up, was very smart since he was a child, and read and wrote even more.
The most rare thing is that he has a kind heart, that his stepmother is no different from his biological mother, and he is very fascinated by Buddhism, even if his parents block it.
In 1859, when he was 19 years old, he couldn't suppress his yearning for Buddhism, and he finally quietly ran away from home.
Wuyun first arrived in Fuzhou, became a monk at the Yongquan Temple in Gushan, and worshipped under Master Changkai. In the second year, on the recommendation of his master, he switched to Master Miaolian. Since then, Void Cloud has been practicing intensively at Yongquan Temple.
Time was like an arrow, twenty years passed in the blink of an eye, and at this time, Void Cloud was already a relatively famous monk in Fuzhou, but he himself always felt that he did not have much profound cultivation. Coupled with the news that his parents had passed away, he felt even more ashamed of his parents, and he kept thinking about repaying his parents for their nurturing grace.
Therefore, the monk Wuyun made a great wish at Yongquan Monastery that he must go to Mount Wutai to worship Manjushri, and it was a "worship of incense", that is, three steps and one worship, to pray for his parents.
After preparing for a while, it was not possible to make the trip, until four years later, when Qianyun was forty-three years old and came to Putuoshan Fahuaan to hang orders. On the first day of July of that year, the monk Qianyun decided to set out from Hokka-an to Mount Wutai, accompanied by four monks.
Because Putuo Mountain is isolated overseas, the real journey to worship incense begins when landing in Ningbo. Because I have to abide by the ritual of three steps and one worship, I can't walk much every day, all the way to the northwest through Huzhou and Suzhou.
On the way, the other four people couldn't bear the hardship, and one by one they dismissed the idea of returning to Putuoshan Fahuaan, and by the time they reached Changzhou, only Qianyun was left.
But Wuyun still refused to give up, and at the end of the year, he arrived in Nanjing and decided to set off after the Lion Mountain Temple after the New Year.
On the third day of the first lunar month of the second year, Wuyun began the journey of worshiping incense again, and along the way, he still strictly adhered to the ritual of three steps and one worship, and the speed of progress can be described as turtle speed.
It was not until December of that year, a whole year, that he reached Tiexedu on the bank of the Yellow River, because it was late, so he had to wait by the Yellow River to cross the river.
At that time, the ferry port was deserted, there was only a thatched hut for the public to rest, not to mention the wind on all sides, and even a big hole in the top.
Void Cloud did not dislike it, so he sat down in the hut and waited for dawn.
But in the middle of the night, a blizzard suddenly fell in the sky, and under the fierce wind, the hut was suddenly cold to the bone, but the virtual clouds did not even open their eyes.
Only after dawn did I find that the snow on the ground was already more than a foot deep, and I only saw the vast wilderness, and I couldn't tell the southeast, southwest, and northwest at all, let alone the boats and passengers.
For three days in a row, Void Cloud was hungry and frozen, and on the fourth day the snow finally stopped, and he was almost frozen, and even his consciousness began to be a little unconscious.
No one had come to or passed through the hut for several days, until the seventh day that a person named Hanako suddenly appeared and saw the monk of the virtual cloud sitting frozen in the snowdrift of the hut.
Touching his heart and mouth, there was still a little warmth, so he pulled off the thatch of the hut and burned the fire, while slowly driving away the cold for him, while boiling some gruel and slowly feeding it.
Asked Hanako to take care of Void Cloud for three days, and it was not until three days later that Void Cloud woke up, which was regarded as a walk on the bridge and came back, and quickly thanked Hanako who saved herself.
Call Hanako call himself Wen Ji, coming down from Wutai Mountain in Shanxi, so that Wuyun does not have to thank you, but there is still a long way to go to Wutai Mountain from here, such a heavy snow, you might as well not worship incense, walking directly over can also show your sincerity.
However, Wuyun refused to accept this suggestion, saying that since he had made a vow in front of the Buddha, as long as he had one breath left, he must abide by it.
Hanako couldn't persuade him to say more, turned around and left the hut, and in a flash, there was no figure, and there were not even footprints in the vast snowy field.
Although Wuyun wondered that Hanako had come and gone without a trace, he continued to move forward, insisted on three steps and one worship, and persisted for almost five months, and finally reached Mount Wutai, more than 23 months after the opening of Hoka-an.
The monk Wuyun encountered some opportunities in Wutai Mountain, and after many parties joined forces, he found that the person who saved him at that time was actually Manjushri, and perhaps the bodhisattva was also moved by his sincerity and went to the rescue.