24Layman Pang Goes Out

居士將入滅，謂靈照曰：「視日早晚，及午以報。」照遽報：「日已中矣，而有蝕也。」士出戶觀次，照即登父座，合掌坐亡。士笑曰：「我女鋒捷矣。」于是吏延七日。州牧于頔問疾，士謂之曰：「但願空諸所有，慎勿實諸所無。好住，世間皆如影響。」言訖，枕于公膝而化。遺命焚棄江。緇白傷悼，謂禪師龐居士即毗耶淨名矣。有詩偈三百餘篇傳於世。

Layman Pang was about to die. He said to his daughter Lingzhao, "Go look at the sun. When it reaches noon, come tell me."
Lingzhao went out, came straight back, and said, "It's noon already — and look, the sun's going into eclipse!" Pang stepped outside to look.
While he was out the door, Lingzhao climbed onto her father's seat, folded her hands, and died sitting up.
Pang came in and laughed. "My girl is quick." And he put his own death off seven days.
The governor, Yu Di, came to ask after him. Pang said, "Only wish to empty yourself of all you have. Take care never to make real what isn't there. Fare well. The world is all shadow and echo." With that he laid his head on the governor's knee and was gone.
His last word was to burn the body and scatter the ashes in the river. Monks and laypeople grieved alike, and said this Chan master, Layman Pang, was Vimalakirti himself. More than three hundred of his poems and verses are still passed down.

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This is the death that made Pang a legend, and in this tradition a real adept is expected to be able to schedule dying and do it deliberately, sitting upright and composed. Pang plans his, sending Lingzhao to watch for noon. She pulls a fast one, lures him outside with a fake eclipse, then climbs into his seat and dies first, sitting up. "My girl is quick" is a proud father admiring the daughter who just beat him at his own game, one last echo of the bridge in case 23, so he postpones his own death a week. The parting line to the governor is the real bequest: empty yourself of all you have, and never make real what is not there, meaning don't hoard possessions or spiritual attainments, since it is all shadow and echo. Monks called him Vimalakirti, the enlightened layman of the sutras who out-argued the Buddha's disciples, which is the tradition admitting its patron saint of ordinary life never needed the robe.