佛祖統紀 37.14

37.14

The author remarks: Sacrificing to Heaven and Earth and making offerings to the ancestral temple and the altars of the soil and grain have inevitably involved slaughtering sacrificial beasts to prepare the offerings. Since the emperors and kings of antiquity, this has been used as a rule, and rulers of states have kept to it as precedent, never daring to question it. Now, those who oversee the transformations of Heaven and Earth—those addressed as the Sovereign on High or Sovereign Heaven and Empress Earth—are supremely sagely and supremely divine. How could divine and sagely beings delight in killing sacrificial victims, or be willing to savour rank and greasy food? This arose because in high antiquity the common custom was to eat raw meat with its fur and drink blood, sustaining oneself in this way, and people inevitably served the gods by the same means. With such crude and uncultivated views, they never understood that sacrificial beasts, rank and fetid, were an act of profanation. Once the populace began eating grain, the custom still could not be changed. Sages and worthies, teaching the world, took antiquity as their model and set it down in the ritual classics; thereupon later kings complied and practiced it, none daring to debate whether it was proper or not. Using it to sustain themselves was still out of an unthinking habit from antiquity, not considering that in serving the gods one ought not to profane them. Now, being resolute in slaughtering life is unbenevolent; offering rank and fetid food is unrighteous. Taking what is unbenevolent and unrighteous as an old habit of self-sustenance, one should still consider restraining it to pursue a mindset of complete goodness. How much less, when serving the spiritual entities of Heaven, Earth, ancestors, and predecessors, should one wish to profane them with sacrificial beasts and rank, fetid things! Ever since the Dharma of the Buddha spread eastwards, exhorting the cultivation of fasting and precepts, even the Lord of Heaven knows to serve the Buddha; how could humans serve Heaven yet not know to serve the Buddha? If one knows how to serve the Buddha, then it is truly credible that one should not profane Heaven with sacrificial beasts. Only Emperor Wu of the Liang and Emperor Xianwen of the Wei decreed that sacrificial beasts should not be used in the sacrifices of the suburban altars and temples, replacing them with vegetables, flour, wine, and fruit. This can be called departing from antiquity yet according with the Way. Offering millet and presenting clear water was also the sacrificial method of the Three Dynasties; what need is there for sacrificial beasts and rank, fetid things?