Text/Hero Style【Chivalrous Culture】
He was on a par with the famous Master Xuanzang, who was listed among the three great monks of ancient China; he was recognized as one of the four famous translators of ancient times; he went to Tianzhu through the Maritime Silk Road to seek the scriptures and write famous passages in the history of Sino-foreign exchanges; he spent twenty-four years taking the scriptures and was personally greeted by Wu Zetian's opening of the East Gate; he was a famous scholar of the Jinan generation, the Tang Dynasty Sanzang Master Yijing.
Opening poem
In the Tang Dynasty, the three treasures had righteousness and purity, and the sea channel sought the Fa to learn the scriptures;
Twenty-four years of propagating the Dharma, promoting exchanges and building miracles.
A young monk determined to seek the Dhamma
The high monk Yijing is a "three great westbound dharma monks" with the same name as Faxian and Xuanzang. Originally known as Zhang Wenming, he was a native of Jinan, Changqing, Tang Dynasty, and lived slightly later than Jian Zhen and Xuanzang.
Master Yijing's ancestor Gaozu served as a county sheriff and had a high family status, and when he was a child, Yijing had a special love for Buddhism; at the age of seven, he entered the Tugu Temple and studied under Master Shan Yu and Master Hui Zhi. During the Tang Dynasty, the temple was also one of the educational centers, and the monks had a high level of education; the monastic study at that time was also very comprehensive, and the six arts, astronomy, geography, yin and yang, and almanac were all within the scope of learning. During this period, the talented Yijing studied diligently, was rich in cultural knowledge, and became more and more sophisticated in Buddhist studies, and traveled to Luoyang, Chang'an and other Buddhist centers to study.
At that time, the degree of monks was very strict, and when taking the exam to take the school, Yijing stood out and became the youngest of the ten monks who went to the state capital to take the exam; and among the three hundred talents, he "passed the pass", and the fourteen-year-old Yijing was officially ordained as a monk. Yijing especially admired the high spirit of Faxian and Xuanzang's westward journey to seek the Dharma; took Master Tang Xuanzang as an example and worked hard to study the Buddhist classics; and was determined to go to Tianzhu to seek the true scriptures and true Dharma.
Journey of the Sea Road Tianzhu Learns the Scriptures
The "Silk Road" of the Tang Dynasty was once interrupted for a long time by the war with the Turks, and it is well known that when Master Xuanzang left the customs, he secretly left the customs because the war was not approved.
At that time, the maritime transport of the Tang Dynasty was already very developed, especially the Nanyang route was very mature. In order to achieve his ambition to study Buddhism in Tianzhu, Master Yijing rushed from Jinan to Guangzhou, and on the way met The Envoy of Gongzhou, Feng Xiaoyi, and finally had the opportunity to travel to India by sea. Feng Xiaoyi both funded and guaranteed him, and the thirty-seven-year-old Yijing Master boarded a Persian merchant ship and set off, arriving in Sumatra in Nanyang 20 days later, learning Sanskrit, etc., and continuing to set off after six months. Later, fengguo stopped to promote Buddhism, traveled to several countries and continued to sail westward, and almost died in the belly of the fish when the ship encountered a major typhoon and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, and finally arrived in the East Indies of a Buddha country a few months later.
In the years that followed, Master Yijing visited the Buddhist relics of various countries in Tianzhu, studied Buddhist texts, collected a large number of Sanskrit sutras and collected more than 500,000 mantras, and continued to promote buddhism and translate a large number of sutras.
Master Sanzang contributed greatly
Master Yijing is a veritable "Tang Sanzang" master from Jinan, Shandong. When Master Yijing officially returned to the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Wu Zetian of the Great Zhou Dynasty greeted him with a courtesy, paid homage to him, and gave Master Yijing the honorific title of "Sanzang" and was honored as a Master of the Tang Dynasty, achieving a special encounter that had never been seen before by senior monks in the past; the scale of the momentum was unprecedented, better than that of Master Xuanzang when he took the scriptures back to Chang'an; Yijing also became one of the outstanding representatives of the Three Tibetan Masters of the Tang Dynasty.
In the twenty-fourth year of taking the path of the sutra, master Yijing traveled to India through the sea route, experienced a huge crisis of typhoons and tsunamis, went to Nanyang three times to propagate the Dharma, translated 500,000 mantras and hundreds of volumes of Buddhist scriptures, so he was called the four great translators along with Kumarosh, Zhenzhen, Xuanzang, etc. Master Yijing's travelogue series, "The Transmission of the Inner Law of the South China Sea" and the "Biography of the High Monk Seeking the Dharma in the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty", have also become highly valuable historical documents, and the road to learning the scriptures has greatly promoted the cultural exchanges of various countries on the Maritime Silk Road, and made great contributions.
Located on the Tongming Mountain in Zhangxia Town, Changqing District, Jinan, Shandong, Yijing Temple is the only temple in the country named after two senior monks, and it is magnificent. Master Yijing's "path of taking the scriptures" was realized through the sea route, that is, the "Maritime Silk Road", so Master Yijing was also praised as "the first person to seek the Law on the sea in ancient China".
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