弘明集 3.24

3.24

I have respectfully read your treatise. You curtail and suppress the Buddhist transformation to devote your will wholly to the Confucian legacy; its significance is strictly defined, and the talent of your writing is sharp and discerning. It is indeed good for warning and spurring on worldly sentiments, truly a fine discourse for the Central Realm. Observing your intention, you do not assert that the one who instituted the Buddha's teaching was not a sage; it is merely that his teachings are provisional expedients lacking reality. Yet I am not sure how you ultimately know they lack reality. Now, in our collective judgment of observable affairs, the general calculation of gains and losses is roughly half and half. The spiritual transformation arises beyond the mysterious ultimate, and its causes are intertwined within the unseen and dark realm. There has never been a divine person who pointed to the palm of his hand to explain it to us; relying merely on the fragmented texts of the historical records remaining after the burning of the books, you forthwith wish to discard and collapse the spiritual transformation, which truly makes one cold at heart. Now, the sage fathoms the principles and exhausts natures to arrive at destiny; if a single creature does not find its proper place, it is as though he had pushed it into a ditch himself. Now [you claim that Buddhism] falsely promises immortality and deceives people into achieving Buddhahood, causing them to shave their heads, wear red robes, burn their bodies, and incinerate their fingers, no longer employing their natural endowments to nourish parents, wives, and the Dao of father and son. Since the advent of the Buddha's teaching, in the thirty-six kingdoms west of the Sandy River down to China, those who have severed this lineage number in the millions. For the Eastern Yi and Western Qiang this might be acceptable, but among the worthy and wise, and those of the class of Youyu and Jin Midi, many who were about to be born have not been born. If the Buddha's teaching indeed lacked reality, how could the cruelty of pushing them into ditches be fully expressed? As for the provisional expedients of the scriptures, with what Dao do they accord that one should say they were intended to bend [the straight] past straightness to govern the unyielding and irascible populace of foreign realms? For the irascible sort, even when bound by the Three Articles of Law, with rewards and punishments clearly presented, they still do not believe or fear; how could one possibly govern them with words such as 'form itself is original non-being,' 'Nirvāṇa,' 'the Dharma-body,' 'the twelve links of conditioned origination,' and 'dust-mote-like kalpas'? Those who receive these instructions are all of the kind you described as endowed with clear and harmonious qi, cherishing benevolence, and upholding righteousness. Relying on clarity and harmony to penetrate the subtle words, and disciplining their righteous nature to practice marvelous deeds, they are thus able to illuminate and contemplate phenomena clearly, until both phenomena and illumination are empty, thereby reaching the Dao. These are all recorded in the Buddhist scriptures and believed by you, sir. As for those of recent times who penetrated the spirit and possessed illustrious virtue, such as the Eight Worthies praised by Sun Xinggong or the Five Sages eulogized by Zhi Daolin, they were all esteemed by their age; hence those two gentlemen were able to set brush to paper. How then can their words be deemed false? Sun praised the profound penetration of Zhu Fahu and the pure breadth of Yu Falan. Being unversed in matters refined or common, I do not know which scholars of the Central Realm they should be compared to. Yet Falan's disciple Daosui did not equal his master, and Sun's treatise states that at that time he was matched against the eminent, which refers to Yu Wenbing. Thus the two venerable masters, Fahu and Falan, must have surpassed him even further. I do not know them at all, nor was the monk Lin fully versed in worldly discourses; if you consider [Lin] equal to Wenbing, he might naturally not fall behind Daosui, but he should still fall behind Fahu and Falan. My previous evaluation was not a mistaken statement. If one can indeed possess the appearance of a monk and a heavenly spirit, profoundly discerning the true from the false, why might he not be a transformation wrought by Śakra, the Lord of Gods, deliberately inciting and encouraging people to attain Buddhahood? The Discourse of White and Black cannot yet be taken as authentic truth. You expressed doubt in your letter, asking why, if there truly is retribution in future lives, the Duke of Zhou and Confucius remained silent without a single word. This is indeed a perennial doubt born of partial views, and it is truly something that ought to be clarified together. The spiritual and divine mysteriously manifests, responding only after being stimulated; it does not take the lead before things. During the decline of the Shang and Zhou, the people fell into the mire and ashes, regicide and rebellion overflowed, and what stimulated the sages with the feelings of the whole world was disorder; therefore the six classics responded only to achieve order. This is why there are no words of the Buddha therein. Liu Xiang stated that the 'Tribute of Yu' enumerated the Nine Provinces, which was an account derived from the Shanhai jing; the people of Shendu lean close to others and love others, and Guo Pu said this was where Tianzhu's Buddha arose. Although this is regarded as a barbarian region by us, myriad lands are arrayed like stars in the great void; who ultimately knows which is the Central Realm? Pondering their inclination toward close affection and love, the transformation of the Buddha accordingly responded there. Among their coarser aspects, there are disorder and tyranny where rulers and ministers lack order; among our refined aspects, keeping to the Dao according to the times, Buddhist affairs likewise exist. Even though there may have been those who received the Dharma-nature at the Yi and Luo rivers, or tasted the true limit at the Zhu and Si rivers, if Shi Yi did not record it because it pertained not to the art of governance, and Bu Shang did not compile it because it deviated from Confucian narratives; and even if it was preserved in external texts hidden in double walls, it was burned again by the King of Qin. That the Duke of Zhou and Confucius did not speak of it is by no means certain. The Dao of the mysterious and void and the affairs of divine immortals have never been absent from worldly texts; the Master's words on the Dao are seen from afar in the writings of Zhuang Zhou, and the Banquet at the Jade Pond emerged from the Jizhong tomb. If so, then the five classics cannot be used to block the wondrous transformations beyond Heaven. You further raised the objection: If things themselves are constantly empty, and emptiness and things are one, then emptiness and existence are not differentiated; how then can there be different appellations for the worthy and the foolish? What the Buddhist scriptures call 'form itself is emptiness, and there is no other emptiness' does not mean that there is no existence; existence itself is simply empty. In terms of existence, the worthy and the foolish have different appellations; in terms of emptiness, the myriad differences are all empty. Form does not form itself; though it is form, it is empty. It exists through the combination of conditions, but originally has no existence. All are like creations of an illusion or visions of a dream: though they exist, they are not existent; the future has not yet arrived, the past is already extinguished, and the present does not abide, so there is no fixed existence. All these principles are the ultimate truths reached by the mysterious sages; to refute them with words is truly difficult to make clear. Contemplating things and self from this perspective, I truly perceive it to be luminous; thus, broad and vast, it heightens the purity of cleansing. How could you, sir, settle your mind upon this? You also said that corporeal form and spirit rely on each other, which the ancients compared to fuel and fire: when the fuel is exhausted, the fire grows faint; when the fuel is gone, the fire goes out; though there is something marvelous, how could it exist alone? Now, fire is produced by fuel, but the spirit is not made by corporeal form. The mind has the refined and the coarse; upon stimulation, it obtains a corporeal form and follows it. When the spirit reaches its utmost, it transcends corporeal form and exists alone; having no form while the spirit persists is what is meant by the constant abiding of the Dharma-body. Therefore, beginning from an ordinary mortal and ending with the Tathāgata, even if one inclines toward the coarse in a single lifetime, so long as consciousness inclines toward it, one will not sink through myriad kalpas, and by habituation will surely ascend in purity. The caterpillar has young, and the solitary wasp carries them off; how much more so when the spirit rests under the canopy of Ratnakūṭa and ascends the throne of the Lamp King—why should this lack a destined time? You also doubted why Śākya, who rescued beings through skillful means, would not begrudge hundreds of thousands of discourses, yet be stingy with a moment's divine light and not use it to enlighten those with deviant views.