Jinpyo Transmits the Tallies眞表傳簡

Jinpyo transmits the tallies.

The monk Jinpyo (眞表) was a man of Mangyeong-hyeon in Wansanju.〔Present Jeonju-mok.〕〔It is also written Dunaesan-hyeon or Nasan-hyeon; it is present Mangyeong, and its old name was Geungnaesan-hyeon. The Biography of Gwannyeong makes his native place Geumsan-hyeon, which confuses the temple name with the county name.〕

His father was Jin (眞), of the rank of naemal, and his mother was Gilbonang (吉寶娘), of the Jeong clan.

At the age of twelve he went to the lecture hall of the Dharma master Sungje at Geumsansa, shaved his head, and asked to study.

His teacher once told him, "I once went into Tang and studied under the Tripitaka master Shandao, and after that I entered Wutaishan, was granted the response of the bodhisattva Manjusri appearing, and received the five precepts."

Jinpyo asked, "If one practices diligently, how long until one obtains the precepts?"

Sungje said, "If the devotion is utmost, not more than a year."

Jinpyo heard his teacher's words and went around the famous mountains, and stopped his staff at Busauiam on Seongyesan.

He cultivated the three karmas in full, but by repentance that forgets the body.

At first he set a term of seven nights, and threw himself against the rock with all five limbs, so that his knees and arms were all shattered and blood sprayed like rain on the rock cliff.

Since there seemed to be no holy response, he resolved to cast off his body and set another term of seven days.

After the second seven days he saw the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha appear and received the pure precepts.

This was the hour of jin on the fifteenth day of the third month of the twenty-eighth year of Kaiyuan, the gyeongjin year, and he was then twenty-three or so.

But since his heart was set on Maitreya, he did not dare stop halfway.

So he moved to Yeongsansa〔also called Byeonsan or Neunggasan〕 and was again as diligent and brave as at first.

Indeed he was granted the response of Maitreya appearing, and received the two scrolls of the Divination Sutra〔this sutra was translated in a foreign country between Chen and Sui, and did not appear for the first time now; Maitreya simply handed over that sutra〕 together with one hundred and eighty-nine tallies (簡子) certifying the fruit of awakening.

Maitreya said, "Among these, the eighth tally stands for the wondrous precepts newly obtained, and the ninth tally stands for the full precepts further obtained.

These two tallies are the bones of my fingers. The rest are all made of aloeswood and birch and stand for the various afflictions.

With these, transmit the Dharma to the world and be a raft at the ford to save people."

Having received the holy prophecy, Jinpyo came and lived at Geumsansa.

Every year he opened an altar and spread the gift of the Dharma widely; the altar seats were so exact and strict that there had been nothing like it in the latter age.

When his teaching had spread everywhere, he traveled about and came to Aseullaju.

Between the islands, fish and turtles formed a bridge and welcomed him into the midst of the water, where he lectured on the Dharma and conferred the precepts.

This was the fifteenth day of the second month of the eleventh year of Tianbao, the imjin year.

Some books say the sixth year of Yuanhe, but that is wrong. Yuanhe falls in the reign of King Heondeok.〔That is almost seventy years from the time of King Seongdeok.〕

King Gyeongdeok heard of him, received him into the palace, took the bodhisattva precepts, and donated seventy-seven thousand seok of grain. The queen and the people of the palace all received the precepts and donated five hundred lengths of silk and fifty nyang of gold.

He accepted all of it, distributed it among the various mountains, and raised Buddhist works widely.

His bones and stone are now at Baryeonsa, the very place where he expounded the precepts to the creatures of the sea.

The leaders among those who obtained his Dharma were Yeongsim, Bojong, Sinbang, Chejin, Jinhae, Jinseon, Seokchung, and others, and all became patriarchs of their mountain schools.

Yeongsim received Jinpyo's tallies, lived on Songnisan, and became the son who carried on the house well.

His way of building the altar differs a little from the six wheels of the Divination Sutra, but he practiced according to the original rule handed down in the mountains.

On examination, the Tang Biographies of Monks says this:

"In the thirteenth year of Kaihuang a monk in Guangzhou practiced a method of repentance. He made two tags of leather, wrote the two characters 'good' and 'evil' on them, and had people throw them; whoever got 'good' was fortunate.

He also practiced a repentance of throwing oneself down, saying it wiped out sin.

But men and women mingled together and recklessly carried on secret practices, and in Qingzhou too the word spread and they practiced the same.

When the officials investigated and called it demonic, they said, 'This tag repentance follows the Divination Sutra, and the prostration repentance follows the various sutras,' and they threw their whole bodies to the ground like a great mountain collapsing.

This was reported at the time, and the naesa sirang Li Yuancuan was ordered to go to Daxingsi and question the various daedeok.

The great monks Fajing, Yancong, and others answered, 'The Divination Sutra exists in two scrolls. Its head says it was translated by Putideng in a foreign country, but the text seems to have come out in recent times. There are copies that have been passed on, but on checking the various catalogs there is no proper name of the translator, nor time nor place. The tag repentance also differs from the various sutras and cannot be followed.'

Because of this an order was given forbidding it."

Now let this be discussed by way of trial.

The tag repentance and the like of the laymen of Qingzhou are like a great Confucian robbing graves with the Book of Odes and the Book of Documents; it may be called trying to draw a tiger and ending up with something like a dog. What the Buddha guarded against beforehand was precisely this.

But if one says the Divination Sutra is suspect because it has no translator, time, or place, that too is carrying hemp and throwing away gold.

Why? Look closely at the text of that sutra: its siddhanta (悉壇) is deep and secret, and for washing away defilement and rousing the lazy there is nothing to equal this scripture.

Therefore it is also called the Mahayana Repentance (大乘懺), and it is also said to come from the Collection of the Six Roots (六根聚). In the two catalogs of Buddhist teachings of Kaiyuan and Zhenyuan it was entered into the true canon (正藏).

Though it lies outside the school of nature (性宗), as Mahayana of the school of characteristics (相敎) it is quite excellent. How could it be spoken of on the same day as the two repentances, the tag and the prostration?

The Sariputra Questions Sutra says this.

The Buddha told Binyadara, the son of an elder, "For seven days and seven nights repent of your former sins and make them all clean."

Dara followed the teaching and grieved earnestly day and night, and on the evening of the fifth day all kinds of things rained down in his room. Towels, wrapping cloths, whisks, brooms, awls, axes, and the like fell before his eyes.

Dara rejoiced and asked the Buddha, and the Buddha said, "These are the signs of parting from the dust, the things that cut and brush away."

Going by this, how does it differ from the matter in the Divination Sutra of throwing the wheels to obtain a sign?

From this it is known: that Jinpyo threw himself down in repentance, obtained the tallies, heard the Dharma, and saw the Buddha may be called no deception.

Moreover, if this sutra were false and wild, why would Maitreya have handed it in person to the Dharma master Jinpyo?

And if this sutra can be forbidden, can the Sariputra Questions Sutra be forbidden too?

Yancong and his kind may be called men who grabbed at gold and did not see the people; let the reader consider it closely.

In praise it is said:

Showing his body in the parched latter age, he roused the lazy and the deaf, On the divine mountain and at Seongyesan the responses came through. Do not say that the diligence of throwing down his body passed on the tag repentance, He built a bridge in the East Sea and transformed the fish and dragons.