"Ostensibly I was being banished to a distant region, but secretly it had been decided that I would have my head cut off. I had known all along that it would come to this, and therefore I said to my disciples: “What I have long desired will now come about, and the joy of it overwhelms me. It is difficult to be born in human form, and such form is easily destroyed. In existence after existence, for countless kalpas, I have lost my life for no significant reason, but I have never given it up for the sake of the Lotus Sutra. Now, when my head is cut off, I will be following in the tracks of the Venerable Āryasimha, and will perform a deed that outshines those of T’ien-t’ai and Dengyō. I will join the line of twenty-five successors of the Buddha, to become the twenty-sixth. I will be carrying out practices surpassing those of Bodhisattva Never Disparaging, so that Shakyamuni, Many Treasures, and the Buddhas of the ten directions will be at a loss to know how to deal with me.”
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