Black-Faced Sect Founder IV

Updated Monday, October 27, 2008 9:42 am TWN, By Joe Hung, The China Post

Black-Faced Sect Founder IV

One story about the life of Black-Faced Sect Founder tells he was born during the Song Dynasty (宋朝). His family was so poor that he had to be sent to a Buddhist temple to serve as a novice trainee. The abbot, however, was a harsh man and the boy was ill-treated. The abused boy grew up at the temple, and fled to Clear-Water Rock at Anxi (安溪清水巖), a county in the prefecture of Quanzhou (泉州). He built a shack where he started leading his ascetic life to become a Buddhist monk all by himself. There was a cave in the hill where he lived, and there was a deep hole in the cave. The hole was so deep that no one could fathom it. Villagers in the neighborhood tried to find what was down at the bottom of the hole. They found nothing when they thrust long bamboo sticks into the hole in search for something valuable. But when the ascetic thrust his bamboo stick into the deep hole, rice came out. As he took out rice, the same amount of grain or more would well up. He did not have to beg for alms every day, and was able to devote himself entirely to the study of Buddhist sutras to attain enlightenment.

The rice the self-training Buddhist monk found was more than enough to sustain him, of course. One thing the kind-hearted monk did right away was to take all the rice needed from the hole — and it was replenished every day — to give it to the poor and the needy. There was more than sufficient rice to satisfy the neighborhood’s need. So he began to sell the surplus to raise a fund for his temple. After he passed away, his grateful neighbors had a wood statue of the sect founder sculpted and enshrined it in his temple. As he spent most of his life at Clear-Water Rock, the people called him Clear-Water Sect Founder.

Another life story of the sector founder says he was a butcher. One summer evening, he met a very old woman who was washing clothes in a river. She was so old and looked so tired that the young butcher took pity on her and extended a helping hand. He volunteered to do the laundering for the old woman. She let him help her. But as he washed, every dirty piece of clothing he tried to rinse became a silky banner or streamer. When the astonished butcher asked the old woman what was going on, she just smiled enigmatically. She then asked him if he would like to become a Buddha. “I would, I would,” he answered eagerly.

But the old woman, who was an avatar of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, or the famed Goddess of Mercy (觀音菩薩), told the butcher his hands were stained with blood, and his soul (which apostles of Gautama Siddhartha or the Buddha did not believe human beings had) was soiled. “How could you become a Buddha?” the Goddess of Mercy in the disguise of an old woman asked the contrite butcher.

The repenting butcher rushed back to his shop. He took out a carver to hack his belly open. He then washed all his organs clean and put them back into his belly. And then he sprinted back to the old woman, who was still by the side of the river, where the clothes had been washed and turned into silk banners and streamers. Appreciating how he atoned for his sins, the old woman told him she was the Goddess of Mercy, and helped him become enlightened. So his followers called him a buddha or god of fairness and probity.

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