Master Xu Yun's Lion Hut.

[Shi Da Dao]

'After a few minutes, we reached Hsu-yun's Lion Hut. It was built of piled stones against a huge boulder that faced south. According to the farmer, the tiled roof was added by another hermit about twenty years ago. There was room for a small garden in front, but judging from the weeds, no one had lived there for some time.

Hsu-yun spent many years here at the beginning of the century. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion and the arrival of foreign troops forced the imperial court to flee Peking, and Emperor Kuang-hsu and Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi set up a temperory captial in Sian. Hsu-yun arrived in Sian about the same time.

In his Hsuyun Hoshang Nienpu, he recorded the following notes for the years 1900 to 1903, when he was in his sixties:

"In the tenth month, I left the city in secret and entered the Chungnan mountains to build a hut. On the back side of Chiwutai, I found a suitably secluded place called Lion Cliff. To avoid unnecessary visitors, I changed my name to Hsu Yun (Empty Cloud). There wasn't enough water on the mountain, and i had to melt snow. To satisfy my hunger, I ate wild plants....

On the winter solstice of the following year, I went to Sian to buy some things for Ch'ing-shan, who was the most respected monk on te mountain and with whom I had developed a close relationship. On the way back, I got caught in a snowstorm. Halfway up the mountain, I slipped and fell down a crevice. Fortunately, I landed in a snow bank. Another hermit heard me yelling and came to my rescue. My clothes were soaked; and it was almost nightfall. But I had to keep going. I knew the trail would be impossible by morning. Long after dark, I reached Ch'ing-shan's hut. When he saw my sorry state, he laughed and said I was a hopeless case. I returned to my hut and stayed there for the rest of the spring and summer.

By the end of the year, the mountains were covered with snow again, and the cold was intense. But even though I lived alone in a poor hut, my mind was completely uneffected. One day, after putting a pot f potatoes on the fire to cook, I sat cross-legged waiting until they were done. Suddenly, I entered samadhi (Sanskrit for an undistracted mind).

Fu-ch'ing and several other monks living nearby were puzzled that I hadn't called on them for some time and decided to pay me a visit to exchange new year's greetings. Outside my hut, they saw tiger tracks in the snow but no human footprints. When they opened my door, they saw I had entered samadhi. One of them struck a stone chime. As I returned to consciousness, they asked me if I had eaten. I said; 'Not yet, but the potatoes must be doen by now.' As I lifted the covedr of the cauldron, I found the potatoes covered with an inch of mould."

Several days later, Empty Cloud left for a more remote section of the Chungnan Mountains 't avoid the trouble of meeting people.' He spent the rest of his long life wandering from temple to temple and helping restore a number of them. When he died in 1959 at Yunchu-shan in Kiangsi Province at the age of one hundred and twenty, he was the most respected monk in China. He still is'

Extracted from: Road To Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits: By Bill Porter

On page 136, there is a photograph of Master Xu Yun's hut.