量處輕重儀 1.67

1.67

Now there are those who presumptuously practice the Vinaya teaching by relying on treatises to distribute gold, money, golden couches, and other items. This is not a comprehensive clarification of the established teaching; they merely use whatever matches the literal text, conforming to their own greed and delusion. Not only are the scriptural texts clear or obscure, but the Sage established the Four Reliances and the Four Great Black-Ink Seals, which one must properly follow as standards. In the lack of leisure within saṃsāra, making immediate decisions upon hearing mere sounds is no different from hearsay. Now, to re-explain the matter of distributing gold, recounting its background, this passage comes from the Mātṛkā-śāstra, which belongs to the Kasyapīya lineage. The root Vinaya did not go this far; it was not intended for [ordinary monks'] capacity. As for 'distributing golden couches', originally a monk was reborn here from the heavens. Human requisites were not where he could be at ease. His mind was agitated and unsettled, and he constantly thought of the various requisites in the heavens. The Buddha instructed Ānanda to supply them as needed. Staying among them for a single night, he ascended to the stage of arhatship (aśaikṣa). Because this was a special dispensation, it does not generally apply to our school. The Fenbie gongde lun recounts this matter in detail. Therefore, in various sūtras such as the Chi shi jing and the Fozang jing, when the Buddha instructed his disciples to cultivate the Path, for those who cherished requisites and suffered shortages such that they could not realize the Path, he made expedient dispensations for them all. But for those who definitely do not cultivate the Path and delight in worldly phenomena, they are not permitted even to drink water, not permitted to tread the earth, and the great ghosts and spirits block them in front and sweep up after them. How could these be the words of mere humans? They are the correct speech of the Great Sage. Those who distribute gold all errantly practice unfinalized teachings, complying with their original greed to hoard, thus going against the class of pure believers. How could there be eminent monks who renounce worldly life, yet fail to practice the fundamental prohibitions, holding wealth and business in their hearts? They are not even worth counting. The Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra is the ultimate teaching of the final conclusion; in the text of that single work, it clarifies the eight impure items ten times, distinguishing between the Buddha's speech and Māra's speech by means of this. Therefore the text states: 'If someone says: "The Buddha permits monks to keep eight kinds of impure viper-like items, such as gold and treasures," this is the speech of Māra, not my disciple. If one speaks the reverse of this, it is called the Buddha's speech.' The text even says that regarding the Jetavana monks' distribution of gold, the Buddha also definitively prohibited it, [telling them] to divide the river and drink its water. Furthermore, in the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, Kātyāyana would not accept a king's gift of treasure. Because of this, the Tathāgata established the major and minor skandhas on observing the precepts: 'My disciples are not like the tīrthika śramaṇas who accept and keep gold and treasures.' Moreover, two hundred years after the Tathāgata's nirvāṇa, the Vṛji monks of the country of Vaiśālī presumptuously practiced the ten points; on the day of the recitation of the precepts, when they proclaimed the distribution of gold, the monk Yaśas gathered seven hundred men from Jambudvīpa and once again clearly judged that it was not permitted to distribute it. When the Buddha was at Jetavana, that was the first prohibition; after his nirvāṇa at Vaiśālī, that was the second prohibition; if it occurs nowadays, that is a third transgression. Distributing gold incurs a pātayantika offense; upon death, one enters the fire for two billion, one hundred and forty thousand years. Is this a minor offense? If they do not believe in being burned by fire in the future, yet now with the raging fire upon their bodies, they would surely believe the suffering and wish to avoid it.