弘明集 2.4

2.4

夫道之至妙。固風化宜尊。而世多誕佛。咸以我躬不閱遑恤于後。萬里之事百年以外。皆不以為然。況復須彌之大。佛國之偉。精神不滅。人可成佛。心作萬有。諸法皆空。宿緣綿邈億劫乃報乎。此皆英奇超洞理信事實。黃華之聽豈納雲門之調哉。世人又貴周孔書典。自堯至漢。九州華夏曾所不暨。殊域何感漢明。何德而獨昭靈彩。凡若此情又皆牽附。先習不能曠以玄覽。故至理匪遐而疑以自沒。悲夫。中國君子明於禮義。而闇於知人之心。寧知佛之心乎。今世業近事謀之不臧。猶興喪反之。況精神我也。得焉則清升無窮。失矣則永墜無極。可不臨深而求履薄而慮乎。夫一局之弈形算之淺。而弈秋之心何甞有得。而乃欲率井蛙之見妄抑大猷。至獨陷神於天穽之下。不以甚乎。今以茫昧之識。燭幽冥之故。既不能自覽監於所失。何能獨明於所得。唯當明精闇向推夫善道居。然宜修以佛經為指南耳。彼佛經也。包五典之德。深加遠大之實。含老莊之虛。而重增皆空之盡。高言實理肅焉感神。其映如日其清如風。非聖誰說乎。謹推世之所見而會佛之理為明。

The utmost wonder of the Dao is certainly what customs and transformations ought to honor. Yet the world mostly considers the Buddha absurd, all holding that 'since my own person is not provided for, how do I have leisure to worry about what comes after?' Matters of ten thousand li away and things beyond a hundred years are all dismissed by them as untrue. How much more so the vastness of Sumeru, the grandeur of the Buddha realms, the spirit's imperishability, that humans can become Buddhas, that the mind creates all existing things, that all phenomena are empty, and that past causes are so distant that retribution comes only after hundreds of millions of kalpas! These are all extraordinarily transcendent, profoundly coherent, credible, and real. How could ears attuned to the popular tunes of Huanghua admit the melodies of Yunmen? Worldly people again esteem the writings and canons of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius. From Yao down to the Han, [the Buddha] was never mentioned in the Nine Provinces and the Hua-Xia realm. How could a foreign land move Emperor Ming of Han? What virtue did he possess that the spiritual radiance was revealed to him alone? All sentiments such as these are merely clinging to previous habits and failing to broaden the mind with profound insight. Thus, the ultimate principle is not distant, yet through doubt they submerge themselves. How sorrowful! The gentlemen of the Central Kingdom understand ritual and righteousness, but are ignorant of knowing the minds of men—how could they know the mind of the Buddha? In the present world, when the planning of proximate affairs is flawed, it brings about rise and fall, reversals of fortune; how much more so with the spirit, which is the self! If one attains it, one ascends purely without end; if one loses it, one falls forever without limit. Can one not approach the deep abyss and tread on thin ice with care? Even in a single game of chess, the calculations of shapes are shallow, yet did the mind of Yi Qiu ever hold back? And yet people wish to employ the perspective of a frog in a well to recklessly suppress the Great Way, going so far as to plunge their spirits alone beneath heaven's pitfall—is this not excessive? Now, using dim and obscured knowledge to illuminate profound and dark causes, since they cannot examine what they have lost, how can they alone understand what they have gained? One ought only to clarify the refined and illuminate the dark, pursue the good Dao, and naturally cultivate oneself using the Buddhist scriptures as a compass. Those Buddhist scriptures encompass the virtues of the Five Canons and deeply add to them distant and great reality; they contain the emptiness of Laozi and Zhuangzi and double the ultimate thoroughness of universal emptiness. Their lofty words and true principles solemnly move the spirit; their illumination is like the sun, their purity like the wind. If not a sage, who could speak them? I respectfully examine what is seen by the world and join it with the principles of the Buddha to elucidate them.