Li Tongxuan, also known as Elder Li,also known as Zaobai Dashi, was a Huayan scholar of the Tang Dynasty, a native of Beijing (present-day Taiyuan, Shanxi), a descendant of the Li Tang royal family, who was honored by posterity as Elder Li and was known as "the first great resident of China", and died on March 28, 730, the eighteenth year of the new century. When he was young, he studied Yi Li, and by the age of more than forty, he specialized in Buddhist texts and immersed himself in Huayan. At that time, it was the time of the eighty "Huayan" translation. In the spring of the seventh year of the New Century (719), he carried the newly translated Huayan Jing to the slave family of Gao Shan (Yi Zuo Xian) in Daxian Village, Tongying Township, southwest of Taiyuan Lu County, to clarify the meaning of the scriptures.
It is said that he only eats ten dates and one cypress leaf cake every morning, which is called jujube master in the world. He later took the manuscript with him and moved to the shrine under the original shrine of Shenfu Mountain, and continued to write, and after five years, it was completed, which is the forty volumes of the "Treatise on the New Hua YanJing". He then wrote four volumes of "A Brief Explanation of the Doubts of the Practice Of the Xinhua Yanjing".
Li Tongxuan, honored as Elder Li, also known as Li Bin. Some people say that he was from Beijing (present-day Taiyuan), and some say that he was from Cangzhou, Hebei Province, and belonged to the Tang Dynasty. People are smart. Before the age of forty, he mainly studied the I Ching, and after the age of forty, that is, when Wu Zetian was in power, he began to study the Huayan Jing. At that time, the new translation of the Huayan Sutra was just printed, which was for the "Eighty Huayan". He felt that the scriptures were relatively vast, and there were many interpretations that varied with each other, and he thought that it was too late to learn to find excerpts from the text, so how could he practice? In view of this, he began to annotate the Huayan Sutra himself.
According to Wutaishan's "Qingliangshan Chronicle", he attained enlightenment at Wutaishan. According to the Zhishu, he considered that Manjushri Bodhisattva had already taught himself the spirit of the Huayan Sutra, and he must write it down. He saw that Mount Wutai was too cold, so he went south to Lu County and began to write.
At this time, in the seventh year of Tang Kaiyuan (719), he traveled to the Oriental Mountains and lived a life of seclusion.
According to the records, Li Tongxuan did not live in the monastery, but came to the alpine slave family of Daxian Village in Tongying Township, Lu County. Because the family was charitable, they made room for him to live in a quiet house. He lived there for 3 years.
Later, he lived in the valley of Majia, southeast of the township, for 5 years. After that, he moved to Hangongzhuang in the northwest for 3 years (some records ignore this time). Others say that he let the tiger carry the Buddhist scriptures to Shenfu Shanyuan (present-day Shouyang Fangshan Temple) and to a soil (stone) shrine, and wrote for another 5 years.
Li Tongxuan said, I want to annotate the Huayan Sutra, can you find me a place? The tiger stood up, and Li Tongxuan stroked it, hanging the bag containing the scriptures on the tiger's back, and let the tiger lead him to a stone niche on the Shenfu Mountain, which was more than 20 miles away from here. It is said that there was no water next to the niche, and after he came, the wind and rain were great in the evening, and a pine was pulled out and turned into a pool. Legend has it that he mouthed a white light as a candle.
While he was living in the mountains, two young women drew water and incense for him and provided him with food. After he wrote the Huayan Sutra for 5 years, the woman disappeared and the nearby village did not know. People thought the two women were mortal.
He once traveled to Mount Wutai, and once in the hospitalization of Shan, he met a very peculiar monk who taught him the important teachings of the Huayan Sutra. When it was getting late, the monk was going to be separated from him, and Elder Li Tongxuan said:
"It's getting late, Master, where are you going to rest?"
The monk pointed with his finger to the north top, and then drifted away, the strange monk walked lightly, as if riding the wind and driving the clouds, Elder Li could not catch up with him, and his heart was very sad. Late at night, he looked up at the pointy mountaintop, but when he saw the red light all over the sky, he asked the abbot of the temple, "Why is the red light so fierce there?"
"Maybe wildfires burn the mountains!" The temple master replied to him.
But the Tongxuan Elder thought in his heart, Isn't that the direction of the monks? It must have been a divine light that was not a wildfire, so he picked up his crutches and tried to climb the mountain to find out, but no one dared to go with him.
At the top of the mountain, the fire was even more blazing, and in the surrounding direction of several miles, I saw a tree in the distance, with a purple and gold banner, and I saw the very strange monk sitting under the tree, surrounded by hundreds of people wearing crowned hats chanting pure and majestic Sanskrit, but Tongxuan did not understand what it was chanting.
At this time he had a thought.
"If I can throw myself into their midst and see the golden body of the sage clearly, then I will have no regrets even if I burn my body!" So he leaned forward and jumped towards the blazing firelight, originally thinking that his whole body would be burned into ashes by the firelight, but who knew, he suddenly felt cool, refreshing, and his heart was full of joy, indescribable. At this time, having seen the solemn dharma of the saints with his own eyes, he was preparing to go forward and pay homage to him, when suddenly the holy realm disappeared into nothingness.
Elder Li sat cross-legged in that place, and sat down for three days, and after three days, he went down the mountain and came to the place of the West Valley Mouth, and saw a few boys with glowing eyes, dressed in heavenly clothes, fluttering in the wind, and he knew that those boys must be very human, so he saluted them, and the boy said:
"One night earlier, you were thrown into the aperture of the tutor, wasn't it you?"
"Yes." Tong Xuan replied, "But I don't know who the Lingshi is?"
"The tutor is Myo Tak Manjushri!"
Tong Xuan wanted to follow the boy to pay homage to Manjushri. But the boy said,
"Your wish in your past life is to promote the teachings, so how can you forget it?"
After saying that, he flew into the air and disappeared without a trace.
Elder Tongxuan thought to himself, The will of Master Manjushri's teaching is to make my own arguments and explain the Huayan Sutra in the future, and I should not fail to live up to the expectations of Master Manjushri.
He died on March 28, 730, the eighteenth year of the new century. His student, the illuminated monk, said that he died in the middle of the night, and the mountains and forests were shocked, with birds singing and hundreds of beasts running away. A white light flew out from above his head and shot straight into the sky. People at the time believed that he was not an ordinary Confucian scholar, but a Buddha and Bodhisattva like Manjushri and Puxian.
It is also said that he sat in a niche. He said that suddenly one day, he went out to visit the old people, and it happened that the people in the village were having a banquet. He said goodbye to the people, "Live well, I'm going back." People thought he was going back to his hometown, so they kept him. He said that even in a hundred years, he would go back. The crowd sent him back to the shrine. The next day, when the crowds escorted him on the road, they found that he had died, but his appearance was the same as when he was alive.
According to the record, Li Tongxuan was seven feet tall, with a pair of large eyes, clear eyes, red lips, and a long purple and lush beard. Beautiful arm length. Round and straight hair, black and red, the hair end is rotated to the right. He wears a birch-skin hat, a linen dress, a long skirt and large sleeves, no belt, and usually walks barefoot. I don't eat much, and I only eat ten jujubes every morning, like a cypress leaf cake the size of a copper coin. It is known as "Jujube Tux".
After his death, he was buried next to the "Stone Mound of the Quercus Forest in the North of the Mountain".
Li Tongxuan's "Treatise on the Xinhua YanJing" has many original insights, so it can be distinguished from the writings of Huayan masters such as Xianshou and Qingliang. His Treatise on the Harmony of the Huayan Sutras not only had a great influence on the Buddhist circles in China, but also in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as on the Buddhist circles in Japan and Korea.
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