樂邦遺稿 1.115

1.115

Lord Chao Jiong was an eminent official during the reign of Emperor Renzong. In his retired years with abundant leisure, he extensively read internal and external classics, thoroughly sought the flavour of principle, and longed to transcend the dusty world, authoring the Daoyuan ji and the Fazang suijin, which no reader could fail to delight in. However, observing what he attained, he took only the solitary, true, empty, and quiescent as the place he reached. In his later years, he also wrote the book Maozhi, wherein he advanced the proposition that the Pure Land is an expedient technique of the Hīnayāna, and so on; this is the utmost error regarding the principle. Alas! Lord Chao possessed lofty brilliance and outstanding discernment, yet did not understand the Great and Lesser Vehicles of Buddhism, hastily uttering such words—swift steeds could not overtake them! I am certainly not clever, but I wish to form a Pure Land connection with the lord, and therefore make an effort to discuss it. Originally, regarding the Hīnayāna as a teaching: because the teaching is biased and its practice is crude, it only expounds a solitary, true emptiness. If delusions of views and thoughts are severed, the body sinks into the great void, and there is no land to be born in either. How could one speak of the Hīnayāna provisionally contemplating the Pure Land? One should know that only the Mahāyāna explains the wondrous principle of the Middle Way and the mutual interpenetration of body and land; hence there is the saying of "Buddha-lands in every dust-mote". If one discusses receiving birth: birth is precisely non-birth, and non-birth is precisely birth. Therefore Yang Wuwei said: 'Having thought is the same as having no thought; / Non-birth is precisely birth. / Without taking the trouble to take a single step, / One completely penetrates the city of the King of Enlightenment.' This is it. For a detailed explanation of this meaning, such as the Resolving Doubts on the Tianzhu Practices and Vows and the Siming's Reply to Lord Yang Wengong, gentlemen who appreciate the Way may try examining them in detail.