According to Buddhism, everything is born for a reason and dies for a reason, and the body is the bubble of dreams. The dead don't need to stay in the world. However, why do those "flesh bodhisattvas" in Jiuhua Mountain leave their immortal bodies to the world?
In Jiuhua Mountain, there is still an ancient funeral custom: whenever a monk dies, he will be put in an earthenware pot, and his body will be put into charcoal, firewood and other items, sealed and kept outdoors for seven days.
Seven days later, people cut a small hole in the bottom of the pottery jar, lit the firewood and charcoal in the jar, and cremated the remains.
However, there are a few monks who have undergone special repentance before their death, and their jars continue to be stored. Three years later, when the clay pot was opened, there was such a miracle: the monks in the pot had a vivid face, but their bodies did not rot. They are "flesh bodhisattvas" worshipped by people.
Wan Jiaxiang, chief of the religious department of Jiuhuashan Management Office, witnessed the opening of the flesh bodhisattva, and he has always been puzzled by this phenomenon. This is the image of a monk named Puwen in Jiuhua Mountain when he opened the jar three years after his death. What is shocking is not only that monk Puwen's body has not rotted for three years, but also that people have noticed that two inches of hair have grown on his head.
This is an image of a monk in Jiuhuashan who was put into a jar after his death. People are loading many paper bags into the jar. What is that? Is the formation of Jiuhua's flesh treated with special drugs like Egyptian mummies? What are those paper bags?
This is a special business of Jiuhuashan-sedan chair. They take people up and down mountains all day to make a living. In their spare time, the bearers chat at the foot of the mountain. The man sitting in the middle is called Jiao Xiaodi. In addition to carrying a sedan chair, he also has an ancestral sideline, which is responsible for putting the dead monk into the jar.
Jiao Xiaodi showed us the process of loading the cylinder. First, firewood is placed at the bottom of the cylinder. This is quicklime, which is what we saw in the paper bag in the video materials. It is wrapped in grass paper mainly for convenience. Finally, they took a whole bag of charcoal and poured it into the jar. This is all the materials they use.
In Buddhism's view, a person's life course is like a ladder to sublimate himself. Through hard practice, he can reach the highest level in discipline, meditation and wisdom, and then he can break through the limitations of his body and condense into a material crystallization-the flesh.
Legend has it that after the death of Buddha Sakyamuni, the cremated remains condensed into a hard granular substance-relic. Buddhist scriptures say that there is a difference between a whole body and a broken body. Jiuhua's body is a whole-body relic, which is even rarer than a dismembered relic. The earliest corpse on Jiuhua Mountain was Jin Qiaojue, and today it is enshrined as a Tibetan Bodhisattva. Legend has it that three years after his death, his face is still as fresh as life, and his bones make a golden lock-like sound. People enshrined it in a three-story stone tower. Unexpectedly, it can also emit "Shenhui" at night, which is later called "Shenguang Ridge".
Jiuhuashan Motianling, where the first bodhisattva is enshrined. Baisui Palace, an ancient temple with a history of 600 years. This is the "centenarian bodhisattva", a living 126-year-old monk. Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty was moved by his spirit, so he built the temple by imperial edict. Jiuhua Mountain has such a magical story about this physical bodhisattva. Legend has it that there were many fires in the Centennial Palace in the early years of the Qing Dynasty, and the most serious one was that the fire destroyed the whole temple. At this time, the hands of the physical Bodhisattva suddenly rose, changing from a meditation posture to a fire-blocking posture, and a heavy rain immediately fell from the sky. The fire was put out and the temple was saved, but since then, the body bodhisattva's arm has never been put down, and she has always maintained a posture of covering the fire.
The stone tablet in the temple records the life of the monk. His real name is Yu Hai, and his words are impeccable. At the age of 24, he became a monk in Wutai Mountain. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, he admired Jin's spirit of "Purdue sentient beings" and came to Jiuhua Mountain, not far from Wan Li. But years of war have left this place devastated and the incense has declined. It was too late to make up my mind to revive Jiuhua Dojo and climb to Motianling along the steep mountain road.
Today, people can still find a small cave under the foundation of the house behind the Baisui Palace Temple, which is the residence of the uncrowned king. It is said that when he practiced in the cave, there were few people on the mountain and there was nowhere to give. When you are thirsty, drink mountain streams and clear springs, and when you are hungry, eat a plant called Polygonatum to maintain your life.
In this cave, he made a grand vow: to copy a Buddhist scripture with his own bloody book. This is a national first-class cultural relic-the Huayan Sutra of Dafang Guangfo, which was collected by monks in Jiuhua Mountain. It was copied by innocent monks with blood and mixed with gold powder. The book is 8 1 volume, with a total of 420,000 words.
People can't help but sigh, how great perseverance and sincere belief support this monk to accomplish such a feat! It is said that in order to copy this scripture, the innocent monk will draw blood from his tongue every 20 days, which took 28 years before and after. During the period, I fainted several times because of excessive blood loss and exhaustion.
In the third year of Ming dynasty, when I was 126 years old, I finally copied all the classics. This big wish has come true. He sealed the hole with a stone and passed away silently. The immaculate monk once left such a poem: "The old man is a hundred skeletons, and his phantom body is thin and fat." The guests came to ask me where I belonged. See you again in spring, May. "
Legend has it that three years later, Emperor Chongzhen saw the reincarnation of a bodhisattva in Jiuhua Mountain in his dream and sent an imperial envoy to the mountain to look for it. When people opened the cave, they found that the monk had a lifelike face and his body had not rotted. Chongzhen built a century-old palace by imperial edict, offering a flawless body with gold, and named it "Ying Shen Bodhisattva". According to Buddhism, some bodhisattvas with perfect practice have the ability and qualification to become Buddhas, but in order to save all beings, they temporarily stopped becoming Buddhas and reincarnated into the world again to educate all beings. This is the so-called bodhisattva.