July 30, 1931. On the occasion of the Christmas Day of the Jizo Bodhisattva, the Jiuhua Mountain in Chizhou, Anhui Province is crowded, because this day is the reopening of the Jiuhua Mountain Jizo Bodhisattva Bodhisattva Flesh Pagoda after 60 years, and it is a great honor for those who believe in Buddha to be able to participate in this grand event of the Buddha country and witness the body of the Jizo King Bodhisattva with their own eyes.
When the monks and masters, following the custom passed down from ancient times, opened the Jizo Bodhisattva Flesh Pagoda and trimmed the growing nails and hair for the Jizo Bodhisattva's body, everyone present held their breath for fear of missing the details.
What no one noticed was that in the corner of the crowd there was a young little Shami, who was deeply shocked by the supreme special merit of the Jizo King Bodhisattva's physical body, and planted in his heart the ambition of spreading the Dharma for the rest of his life and spreading all sentient beings like the Jizo King Bodhisattva.
Even decades later, the 16-year-old Xiao Shami was already gray-haired, but when he recalled what he saw on Jiuhua Mountain in 1931, the old monk Mengseng, who had become a well-known monk at home and abroad, still remembered vividly.
It seems that time has stopped here with the old monk Mengseng, even if he has suffered and suffered, Mengseng is still the 16-year-old little Shami who has just entered the Buddha country, and it is still the clear and delicate heart.
From military cadet to monk, from monk to prisoner, from prisoner to cancer, from cancer to 103-year-old Buddhist giant, this is the legendary life of Mengseng.
When he first had the idea of becoming a monk, Mengsan was only 16 years old, when he was still a military cadet in the Northeast Wutang, carrying the ardent expectations of his parents eager for him to join the army and serve the country and save the nation from danger.
However, with the outbreak of the 918 Incident, the Northeast Lecture Martial Hall, which was on the front line of the war, had to move south to merge with the Whampoa Military Academy, and just as Mengsan was preparing to follow the army from Beijing to Nanjing, a dream that changed his life circumstances appeared.
Following the guidance of the dream, Mengseng traveled all the way from the Duli Temple in Beijing to the Huanhua Temple for ordination, and finally followed the guidance of the dream all the way south to Jiuhua Mountain, where he saw the true body of the Bodhisattva King of Jizo by chance, and truly embarked on his path of propagating the Dharma.
The Buddhist community of the Republic of China has produced many great monks and great virtues that have shocked the ancient and modern times, and Mengseng, who is dedicated to studying Buddhism, has also studied the "Huayan Sutra" from Cizhou and Qi Wan, and then under the recommendation of Qiu Qiu, he was able to meet with the legendary monks of the Republic of China, Master Hongyi, Master Qianyun and other great virtues, and produced a master-apprentice fate, and under the influence of these great virtues, his achievements in Buddhism have been thousands of miles by day.
In 1941, China was entering the white-hot stage of the War of Resistance Against Japan, and Japan poisoned northeast China, and the people were living in poverty. As a disciple of the Buddha, Mengsan saw the misfortune of his family and country, and never had the idea of leaving Beijing, but used his special status as a cover for many anti-Japanese fighters of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, coping freely in the Longtan Tiger's Den, and reserved the fire for the final victory of the revolution.
With the complete end of the civil war in 1950, the dream of being obsessed with Buddhism could not adapt to the changes in reality, and he was unwilling to give up his pursuit of promoting the Dharma, and finally arrested and imprisoned in the prime of his young adulthood, and later sentenced to 15 years in prison and 18 years of labor reform on charges of counter-revolution for insisting on promoting the Dharma in prison.
When he recalls the 33 years in prison, Mengseng has become light, and he often enlightens students who are angry with him:
"Everything in this society is fair, including my own 33 years in prison."
33 years in prison is a long ordeal for anyone, and almost half of his life is imprisoned.
For Meng Shen, who was in the prime of life at that time, these 33 years should have been the golden period when he could propagate the Dharma, but he could only be trapped in this square inch because of the disaster of innocence.
The name Mengseng was gradually forgotten, replaced by cold numbers in prison.
Mengseng didn't think about giving up, after all, when he returned to his free body thirty-three years later, he was already 69 years old, an age with little hope.
Even if he is free and his body is old, can he still make pilgrimages throughout Asia as he did when he was young? To this question, even Mengseng himself did not have an answer for a while.
Mengseng did not think about suicide, because this suffering is too long to rush. But just like the dream that guided him to become a monk in Jiuhua Mountain, he also dreamed that someone told him not to give up, and that he would still have time and opportunity to spread the Dharma in the future.
It was under the persuasion of such bizarre dreams that Mengseng gave up the idea of suicide, and often used the phrase in the Huayan Sutra that "if the hot iron wheel rotates on the top of the Ru, he will not suffer because of this, and lose bodhichitta in the end", and regarded the thirty-three years in prison as a kind of penance, refining the Dharma in the midst of suffering, and quietly waiting for the day when he will be released from prison.
In 1982, Mengseng waited for his rehabilitation, and as soon as he was released from prison, he couldn't wait to put on his robe again, regardless of his weak body, and raced against time to go around the world to preach the Dharma.
However, the exhaustion of sleep and food still caused Mengseng's body to have problems, because he was bullied in prison, and his meals were mixed with rice and sand stones, and in 1995, Mengseng was found to have bowel cancer.
When the doctor told Mengseng that he would not live for five years at most, Mengseng replied to the doctor with a calm smile:
"After studying Buddhism, you can face any kind of illness, and no one can resist it. The disease is coming, and you have to transform it. ”
Perhaps the doctor at that time did not care about the plain words of the old monk in front of him, but after that, Mengseng did not stop due to illness, but was more hurried than before, and in just a few years, his disciples who converted to him were all over the world, and Mengseng fought back the lost thirty-three years.
He was 67 years old when he was released from prison, and in the eyes of outsiders, his dreams have gradually been forgotten; He was 80 years old when he suffered from bowel cancer, and in the eyes of outsiders, Mengjian's life had come to an end.
But Yumeginseng is still the unconventional Mengseng, like a silent walker, silently enduring hardships and trials from all directions, while smiling and stretching out his hand to every lost person. Turning suffering into a ganlin that watered all sentient beings is something that Mengseng has been practicing all his life.
In 2010, in Wuxi Taihu University Hall, 92-year-old Nan Huaijin waited here for his long-time friend, the 95-year-old monk Mengseng.
One is a well-known lay man who has studied both Chinese and Western languages, and the other is a great virtue who has practiced and promoted the Dharma, and the century of these two ninety-year-old people meets, just like the Buddhist saying, "Because of fate, fate is the cause." ”
In the face of the onlookers, Nan Huaijin, who was excited, asked for advice, and the famous classics opened their mouths to make the students and disciples happy.
And the old monk Mengseng, who was sitting in the center, smiled and listened more often, because he knew that the disciples had very few opportunities to talk to Nan Huaijin, and he was unwilling and unwilling to take up this precious time. Meng Jian said to Nan Huaijin:
"Do learning, you have learned a lot, I have no learning."
Of course, this is the self-effacing words of the old monk, how can this great monk who has spent his whole life promoting the Dharma and walking all over the world not learn?
From military cadet to monk, from monk to prisoner, from prisoner to return to lotus, the legend of Yumeginseng also reaches the end of the story over time.
On the afternoon of November 27, 2017, the dream of calmly explaining the aftermath passed away in his sleep, and the legendary life of this old monk began with a dream and ended with a dream.
Finally, pray that the old monk Lian ascended the ninth pin, did not give up all sentient beings, took the wish to come again, and had love.