宋高僧傳 21.48

21.48

系曰：入冥之說與夢略同。穆王將化人歡宴，秦穆得上帝剪鶉，形在人間，神遊上界，前言既發，後事必然。是知六候八徵，諒非虛也。寗師入冥，與後唐馬珣見天符下以潞王為天子無異。寗所見殿中物象題牓，終符其述。謂之為夢想，夢想有徵；謂之為神遊，神遊不謬。將知覺夢惟一，明昧有殊，如《攝論》云：「如夢等覺時，一切處唯有識也。」有若古莽國多眠，五旬一覺，以夢為實，以覺為妄。若然者，覺之所為，為夢之先兆也，而取實於夢中真實也。夢覺反用，其猶一歟。寗師非妄者，果梁革唐命，二李、王、楊皆與天子抗衡。諸殿遠望者，得非餘割據群雄偏霸者乎？所食荷葉，與隋僧法慶同。故《幽冥》等錄中康何德，次李山龍入冥而返，說事皆驗焉。經云：「猶如睡夢人，知一切諸物，有身不移本處」是也。

The appraisal says: "The account of entering the underworld is roughly similar to dreams. When King Mu of Zhou feasted with the transformed man, and Duke Mu of Qin received the snipped quail from the Lord on High, their physical forms were in the human realm while their spirits roamed the upper realms; once the prior words were uttered, the subsequent events surely followed. Thus we know that the 'six seasonal signs' and 'eight portents' are truly not false. Master Ning's entry into the underworld was no different from Ma Xun of the Later Tang seeing the heavenly talisman descend appointing the Prince of Lu as the Son of Heaven. The forms and placards in the halls that Ning saw in the end corresponded to his accounts. Call it dreaming, and the dreams had verifications; call it spiritual roaming, and the spiritual roaming was not mistaken. One will understand that waking and dreaming are but one, differing only in clarity and obscurity, just as the Mahāyānasaṃgraha says: 'Just as in a dream or waking state, all places are consciousness-only.' It is like the ancient country of Mang, where people slept much, waking only once in fifty days, taking dreams as reality and waking as delusion. If so, what is done while awake serves as the omen of the dream, yet truth is obtained in the reality of the dream. Dreaming and waking reverse their functions, yet are they not one? That Master Ning was not speaking falsely is shown by the Liang replacing the Tang mandate, and the two Lis, Wang, and Yang all contending with the Son of Heaven. Those halls viewed from afar, were they not the other warlords carving out territories and asserting partial hegemony? The lotus leaves he ate were the same as the Sui monk Faqing. Therefore, in records such as Youming lu, Kang Hede and then Li Shanlong entered the underworld and returned, and the things they recounted were all verified. The sūtra says: 'Like a person in a dream, / who knows all things, / whose body does not move from its original place'—this is precisely it."