When people think of Journey to the West, it is natural to think of Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty. Because of a "Journey to the West" his deeds are well known. In fact, before Xuanzang, there was another monk who had also taken the scriptures from the Western Heavens and sacrificed himself to seek the Fa, and he was the Fa Xian monk.
Faxian, commonly known as Gong, was a native of Wuyang (present-day Linfen, Shanxi) in Pingyang County. Before he was born, his brothers died one after another, and his mother, fearing that bad luck would come again, sent her children under the age of 3 to a Buddhist temple to be shaved, hoping to be blessed by the Buddha.
When he was 10 years old, his father died, and soon his mother died, and Fa Xian had no worries. At the age of 20, he received full ordination and became a monk. Then, he first traveled to various places to study, and finally came to Chang'an to continue his studies.
Almost at the same time, the monk Dao'an came to Chang'an Wuchong Temple to give a lecture, attracting many disciples. With the support of Jian Jian, he organized monks from the native region, the Western Regions, and Tianzhu to translate the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, and translated a total of fourteen Buddhist scriptures, more than one million words.
The Fa Xian, who lived in Chang'an, took advantage of this opportunity to visit the monks and study the scriptures tirelessly. But in the process, he found that the texts he studied lacked a section on the precepts, and the monks had no basis for practicing. In order to carry forward the Dharma, Dharma Xian vowed to go west to Tianzhu and seek the true scriptures.
It's very; admirable. You must know that Fa Xian was already over sixty years old at that time, and xuanzang two hundred years later went to the west to seek the Fa in his twenties.
Making a grand wish, Faxian left Chang'an with the monks Hui Jing, Dao Zhen, Hui Ying, Hui Wei and others in 399 AD and embarked on a long westward journey.
This road can be said to be chaotic and chaotic. After crossing the Longshan Mountains, Faxian and his party reached Qianguiguo (Western Qin, present-day western Lanzhou) and stopped at Zhangye. At this time, the Houliang regime in the west was in civil strife, and the road in the western region was impassable.
The five continued to stay, during which time six more fellow practitioners joined the procession. Later, with the vigorous help of Dunhuang Taishou Li Huan, Faxian and others traveled west again. Out of the Yumen Pass, the Western Regions, they came to the Bailongdui Desert (the area east of Lop Nur). "There are many evil ghost hot winds in the Sand River. In the face of death, there is no one who is complete. There are no birds on the top and no beasts on the bottom. "By virtue of the sun and the moon, they judge the direction of east and west, and with the dead bones of countless dead people, they march as road signs. After 17 days and nights of trekking, they reached Loulan.
At this time, Lou Lan was experiencing the last glory. The Dharma Xian records that the costumes of the locals were similar to those of the Han Chinese, that the people believed in Buddhism, and that there were 4,000 monks in the country, most of whom practiced Theravada.
Leaving Loulan, Fa Xian followed the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert to the Yanyi Kingdom. Here, Faxian and others were treated unfriendly. So they spent 35 days crossing the desert (southwestbound, with no inhabitants on the road, and the sand line was difficult) to Khotan (present-day Hotan). During the Three Kingdoms period, Zhu Shixing, a senior monk in the Central Plains, waited here to study buddhist scriptures.
When Fa Xian arrived in Khotan, he found that the country was rich and peaceful, full of temples and monasteries, and the monks were highly respected here. Here, Faxian read many Buddhist texts that were not found in the Central Plains, which strengthened his determination to learn the scriptures from the Western Heavens.
Three months later, the Fa Xian and his party continued westward, and they had to cross the Green Ridge (present-day Pamir Plateau). There is snow here all year round, and it is difficult to survive in the face of avalanches. After a month of arduous trekking, Wan Xing Faxian and others successfully crossed the Onion Ridge.
In 402 AD, Dharma Xian came to the kingdom of Phra Sa (present-day Peshawar, Pakistan), which was the center of Northern Tianzhu Buddhism. Legend has it that there was an eight-headed elephant that could not pull away the Buddha bowl. Then he went to the country of nadir in present-day Afghanistan.
Along the way, he visited Buddhist sites, and after a brief stay, the Dharma Xian continued south. He prepared to cross the Little Snowy Mountains (present-day Sefidek Mountains in Afghanistan) into Central India.
At this time, some of the companions who died, some who returned halfway, some who found another famous teacher, and those who followed the Fa Xian, only Hui Jing and Dao Zhen were left. When crossing the snowy mountains, they encountered a cold wind, and the huijing of their peers was not supported, and they died here. Fa Xian caressed the corpse and cried, "If this picture is not fruitful, why not?" However, he did not feel the slightest cowardice because of this, but ordered him to move on. Because from the day he was on the road, he had already put life and death aside.
After crossing the snow-capped mountains and after a year's trek, Dharmakaya finally came to the Buddha's hometown, the Acropolis of Gaviro. To his surprise, the city was full of decadent ruins, and the Buddhist temple was particularly ruined. Dharmakaya then came to the capital of the Capricorn kingdom, Balenfer, where he found the Sutra of the Precepts at the Mahayana Monastery.
It took three years to learn Sanskrit and the Buddhist scriptures written in Sanskrit. Three years later, his companion Dao remained here and did not want to return to Middle-earth. But the seventy-year-old Fa Xian "wanted to make the precepts circulate in Han China, so he returned it alone."
Dharma xian traveled south and spent two years studying Buddha image depictions in the Kingdom of Tamuluk in Tamalidi (present-day Tamruk, Bangladesh). In 409 AD, he sailed from the Bay of Bengal to Sri Lanka, where the people generally believe in Buddhism.
At the Fearless Mountain Monastery on the island, he discovered precious texts such as the Misha Serra Sutra. Fa Xian, who had been preparing to embark on the return journey, stayed for another 2 years.
Two years later, the dying old man boarded a large boat carrying two hundred people and embarked on his return journey alone. At this time, it had been 12 years since he left Chang'an.
During the voyage, the big ship was disoriented by the storm, the ship broke down, the water entered, and had to stop on an island for a while, repair the loopholes and then continue to move forward. The sea is boundless, and you can only rely on the sun, moon and stars to discern the direction. When night falls, strange creatures appear on the surface of the sea. After drifting like this for three months, they arrived in the kingdom of Yevati. Opinions vary as to the exact location of the country. Some say it's Java or Sumatra today, but the problem is that Sri Lanka is only a thousand nautical miles to these two places, and it is impossible to drift for three months.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, French historians proposed that the Fa Xian had reached the American continent. Zhang Taiyan further wrote the article "Fa Xian Fa Xian Western Hemisphere", which determined that Fa Xian was the first to discover the American continent. After thirty years of painstaking research, Lian Yunshan combined monsoon and ocean current factors in his book "Who Arrived in the Americas First" and determined that the ship on which Faxian was riding was overhauled in the Barbyan Islands of the Philippines. After three months of rafting, Faxian and the others reached Los Angeles to Acapulco, Mexico. As soon as this statement came out, it caused an international sensation.
After staying for five months, they planned to continue their journey to Guangzhou. Unexpectedly, the group encountered a storm again, drifted for more than eighty days in a row (if it was Southeast Asia, it would not drift for such a long time, which proved from the side that Fa Xian was very likely to reach the Americas), and only then arrived in Qingzhou Changguang County (present-day Qingdao).
It was winter, and Shi Shi left him behind, but Fa Xian, who had come back so hard, said, "I haven't been able to stay long because I have not yet reached my will." Therefore, more than seventy Fa Xian, with the scriptures, marched to Jiankang (Nanjing) in the south. His solo translation of the Da Pan Mud Sutra became an important Buddhist text. The "Records of the Buddha's Kingdom" (also known as the "Fa Xian" and "Journey to Tianzhu") left by him have become important historical materials for the study of Central Asia and South Asia in the fifth century.
In 420, Fa Xian died in the Jingzhou monastery at the age of eighty-six. Mr. Tang Yongtong commented on his three major contributions:
By sea and in accordance with it, travel widely in the western land, study in Tianzhu
The Book of the Buddha's Kingdom records that the situation in the Western Regions at that time was very detailed
He brought back "Fang Et al." and "Nirvana", and opened one of the branches of the later yixue
Fa Xian is the first person who deserves to sacrifice himself to seek the Fa.