弘明集 2.14

2.14

Someone asked: “If all Buddhas are presently existing and clearly penetrate everything, and the power of their divine majesty is autonomous over all phenomena, why do they not shine their radiant presence in the present age so that refined and coarse alike might share in faith and awakening, and pour down their divine efficacy upon those in extreme distress so as to rescue those unjustly destroyed? Instead, they cause men of noble character to see nothing of the Buddha and thus join in disbelief, together falling into the suffering of icchantikas. In a single day, among the hosts of Qin and Zhao, Bai Qi and Xiang Ji buried alive six hundred thousand men. Among ordinary people of past and present and all those who suffered being buried alive, it is true that not all possessed great goodness from past conditions, yet neither did they all lack any favorable condition and entirely amass great evil. Yet one saw nothing of the Buddha's compassion. When in a single day all were buried together in pain, [the Buddha] passively allowed them to end up identical, sitting by and watching their extreme agony without responding. How can this be considered benevolence? If one cannot save [them] unless their conditions tilt heaven and their virtue exceeds the world, how can it be called an autonomous and inconceivable divine power? Luyang turned back the sun; Geng Gong made a spring gush forth; in Song, tigers crossed the river and locusts avoided the borders of Jiujiang. Even these, through heart and mind cutting through obstacles, were able to make non-ordinary ways mysteriously connect. How much more so with the divine power of a Buddha! Melting the fury of Qi and curing the heart of Ji so as to save a million lives would surely be easier than inserting Sumeru into a mustard seed, and far more benevolent than destroying one's own body for a single tiger or pigeon. Yet now, when one contemplates him, he is not seen; when one calls upon him, he does not hear; when one entreats him, there is no salvation; he is as desolate and silent as the great void, without any distinction. And yet among people, there are those who become śramaṇas and burn their bodies; there are those who sever human relationships and excise the six passions; there are those who endure painful toil and exhaust their wealth to serve temples and images. They abruptly forfeit their prime years, yet one sees nothing of what they gain. Alas, how pitiable! If one says that the response lies in the future, then as for those six hundred thousand lives just mentioned, their good and evil were not the same, yet their wrongful destruction was identical. Now, though good and evil differ, how could what they receive after this body uniquely differ from what is seen in the present world? Since these distinct categories received not the slightest distinction, what hope is there in a vast and boundless future? What is more, is it not to be feared that there truly is no future at all? A sūtra says that when [the Buddha] pressed the earth with his toe, the three thousand Buddha-lands were all revealed, and the blind, deaf, mute, those in prison, and those suffering from poison and pain all attained peace. Now, whether far or near, surviving or deceased, possessing precepts or lacking precepts, the Buddha is equal in his compassion toward them. These conscious beings here ought to have their pain seen and ought to be granted peace equally with those. Yet while sūtras abound in such fine words, in reality there has never been even a fleeting response. How can we know in private that this was not fabricated by an extraordinary and outstanding figure in a foreign land who devised this doctrine of emptiness to threaten the tyrannical and befriend the good, whose words contain profound and far-reaching subtleties and whose conduct possessed a pure and serene beauty, so that credulous people surrendered themselves completely, and it was thereupon transmitted into unfathomable realms until its momentum could not be stopped or diminished?”