After the Master had been in the monastery for some time, he began to miss his parents, so he went home to visit them. While there, he matched wits with (his sister) Sumyŏng. Sumyŏng was the elder, having been born three years before the Master, in the seventeenth year of T’ien-yu (920). When she was born, her cries had a musical lilt to them, and she grew up to be exceptionally intelligent.
Once, a mendicant monk came to the house and read from the Lotus Sūtra. [48] When she heard it from the inner quarters, faith at once arose in her, so she prepared a seat for the monk and invited him to read it through to the end. The monk read the eight fascicles through, whereupon she asked him to lodge with them for the night and expound the Sūtra. She retained everything she heard during those two days, and when the monk was leaving, he said to her: “I am the Tripitaka Master Bodhiruci[49] and you are an incarnation of the bhiksu Meghaśrī.”[50]
On the day that the Master came home on his visit, Sumyŏng asked him what he had been doing. The Master explained to her the teachings concerning Samantabhadra and Avalokiteśvara as spiritual guides,[51] as well as expounding the text of both the Sūtra of the Divine Assembly[52] and the Sūtra of the Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva.[53] He expounded all this orally, but she remembered every word. That night, the Master also chanted the Summary of the Six Stages of the Hua Yen Sūtra[54] and the Five Hundred Questions and Answers. [55] Sumyŏng, who was secretly listening, suddenly became enlightened. Five years later, when asked to write down the text through which she had become enlightened, (she did so) without omitting a single word or phrase.