弘明集 12.77

12.77

I have received your letter and condescending challenges, and fully understand your noble purport. This principle is subtle and distant, exceedingly difficult to put into words; furthermore, as it is a great affair of an entire epoch, it ought to be scrutinized completely in due season. My own talent is not one that can fathom the obscure or sustain rigorous analysis, and the difficulty of attaining subtlety only adds to my confusion. However, since your lofty voice has arrived, I dare not remain silent, and have again rashly ventured my shallow views to reply clumsily to your points. Having nothing that might elucidate or clarify, I can only turn about restlessly in anxiety. I hope you will consult the monks of wide talent to make good what I have failed to attain. You say: “What is the ultimate aim? If learning is taken as the ultimate aim, then that which is studied only brings forth one's natural character. If nature resides where it is received, then the root of nature can be known in advance.” What I now take to be the ultimate aim is the supreme Dao toward which one strives; learning is the fishtrap and snare for daily use. Now, if one wishes to strive toward that ultimate supreme, one cannot but rely on the trap and snare to convey oneself. Hence we know that the effort that is relied upon is not yet the ultimate realm. Those who accumulate learning to reach the culmination must ascend from the coarse to the subtle; once the fish is caught, the trap is discarded—its rationale is seen here. You believe that conversion through the miraculous is easy, whereas the labor of benevolence and righteousness is difficult: “For what reason would the sages have abandoned the easy, real Dao to engage in secondary matters that are difficult to practice? That this is not so is abundantly clear.” My humble opinion is that the Buddha's teaching and the inner sages are eternally distinct. Since they are distinct, their principles cannot be juxtaposed. Now in discussing the Buddhist principle, one must naturally establish one's arguments based on its tradition; only then can the paths of obstruction and free passage be examined in detail. The reason my previous reply mentioned that the practice of benevolence and goodness and the principle of not killing seem to be compatible was merely to draw upon them for comparison; when it comes to advancing arguments and the ultimate intent of the Vinaya and sūtras, they are indeed hard to unify. However, in my humble view, the Buddhist teachings are rather the more difficult. Why do I say this? What the inner sages elucidate holds that if one speaks good words, the response is like an echo or shadow, and if they are not good, a thousand leagues will oppose them. In this way, good and evil meet response in an instant, and calamity and fortune alternate right before one's eyes. Moreover, practicing benevolence depends upon oneself; if one broadens it, that is it—yet there are still those who abandon rectitude to turn to evil, or turn their backs on the Dao to follow desire. How much more so when Buddhist teachings compare a single life to the snapping of fingers and set the ultimate goal in eternal kalpas, speaking of marvelous spirits without worldly status and positing retribution before any sign appears! To accept and believe in this—is it not exceedingly difficult? For this reason, since the teaching reached the Central Lands, those who have awakened to it have been few.