傳法正宗記 2.81

2.81

Appraisal: The eminent monk Shenqing of the Tang dynasty disliked the Chan practitioners. Exalting his own school, he composed a work disparaging them, saying: 'Among those holy sages who transmitted the Dharma, śrāvakas were interspersed. For example, although Kāśyapa and others turned their minds [toward the Mahāyāna], they still possessed inferior wisdom. How could they transmit the Buddha's mind-seal?' He then cited the Account of the Transmission of the Dharma Pitaka, which says: 'In the past, Śāṇakavāsa told Upagupta: "The samādhis of the Buddha are unknown to pratyekabuddhas. The samādhis of pratyekabuddhas are unknown to śrāvakas. The samādhis of the great śrāvakas are unknown to the other śrāvakas. Ānanda's samādhi is unknown to me now. My present samādhi is likewise unknown to you. Such samādhis will all be extinguished following my extinction. Furthermore, seventy-seven thousand Jātaka sūtras, ten thousand Abhidharmas, and eighty thousand pure Vinayas will likewise be extinguished following my extinction."' How stubborn was Qing, giving free rein to his personal likes and dislikes, and failing to realise that he was grievously wronging the former sages! When I first examined Qing's book and saw his comparative discussions of the three teachings, although the writing was not fine, because he was good at memorising sūtras and treatises and distinguishing the importance of matters, I did not immediately reject him. But when I examined his remarks mocking the Chan practitioners, with his several dozen lines of interrogation, he merely picked up the popular fashions of the day and cited treatises and accounts without grasping their full details. At first I thought this was not a definitive discourse and firmly unworthy of notice. Slowly pondering his assertion that Kāśyapa and the others could not transmit the Buddha's mind-seal, it struck me as an especially wild statement. Fearing that it would bewilder worldly people and increase the endless reciprocal disparagement among younger, unlearned students, I have rectified it, not out of a fondness for disputation. Generally in all things, principle is the root and trace is the branch. Those who penetrate the root gain much; those who are bound to the branches lose much. As for the several dozen worthy sages who transmitted the Dharma, although they manifested as being identical with śrāvakas, how could it be fitting to define them exhaustively as śrāvakas? The sūtra says: 'All the unexcelled right Dharma that I now possess has been entrusted entirely to Mahākāśyapa.' The account says: 'I now adorn myself with all great benevolence, great compassion, the four dhyānas, the samādhis, and immeasurable merits; and the monk Kāśyapa is also like this.' Furthermore, it says that Upagupta was a Buddha without the physical marks, and that Saṅghanandi was in the past the Tathāgata King Suvarṇa, who descended in trace to be a patriarch. Such examples are very numerous. Is this not that the sages, wishing to uphold their Dharma, respected one another and manifested as great or small? The Laṅkāvatāra speaks of three kinds of arhats: the first are arhats who are śrāvakas attaining determined quiescence; the second are arhats who have practised the bodhisattva path; the third are arhats transformed by nirmāṇabuddhas. These [latter] arhats, by virtue of their original vows, good roots, and expedient powers, appear in the Buddha lands, are born among the great assemblies, and adorn the assemblies of the Buddhas. As for Mahākāśyapa and the several dozen worthy sages who transmitted the Dharma, were they not arhats transformed by nirmāṇabuddhas? Being transformed by the Buddha, it is fitting that their four dhyānas, samādhis, and immeasurable merits were not different from those of the Tathāgata. Since they were not different from the Tathāgata and transmitted the Buddha's mind-seal, who can say this is not so? As for Śāṇavāsa saying, 'Ānanda's samādhi is unknown to me, and my present samādhi is unknown to you'—to say this was likely only an expedient praise and blame; it cannot be called an absolute certainty. The sūtra says: 'Having entered the Far-Reaching Stage, one attains immeasurable samādhis.' Now, those who enter the Far-Reaching Stage are bodhisattvas of the seventh stage. If even a bodhisattva of the seventh stage can attain immeasurable samādhis, could transformation Buddhas be entirely incapable of attaining them? However, the mind-seal transmitted by the Buddha and other samādhis ought to be spoken of in different terms. The mind-seal is the wondrous root of the great sage's all-inclusive knowledge; the other samādhis are the wisdom arising from that wondrous root. Both are simply called samādhi. The mind-seal is precisely what the sūtra calls the samādhi of the King of Samādhis. What the Tathāgata transmitted was this very samādhi. Did Qing consider it to be [just one of the] other samādhis? As for what he called 'the seventy-seven thousand Jātaka sūtras, ten thousand Abhidharmas, and eighty thousand pure Vinayas being extinguished following my extinction,' I have never seen this in other texts, but only in the Account of the Transmission of the Dharma Pitaka, which remains suspect. Even supposing that book is not in error, it was likely not because the worthy sages who transmitted the Dharma could not uphold them that it was so. It must be that the capacities and karmic merit of living beings in later generations would become increasingly weak and unable to bear those teachings, and for that reason they were extinguished. Just as the existence and extinction of the three periods of the True Dharma, Semblance Dharma, and Final Dharma wax and wane with the world, how could it ever be that the worthy sages who propagated the Dharma brought about the Final [Dharma]? Alas, when scholars do not study the scriptures or fathom principle, but rashly distort the intentions of the sages in formulating their theories, even if they could compile records spanning ten thousand generations, what benefit would it bring? The Book of Rites says: 'Learning by rote and recitation is insufficient to make one a teacher.' Does this not apply to Qing?