弘明集 4.32

4.32

Explanation: Shennong determined livelihoods, and the people of Zhou completed teachings. Having initiated grain eating, they also spoke of superior medicines; having used sacrificial beasts, they also praised duckweed and water-pepper. The way of sacrificial banqueting thus has no fixed prescription. Previously, citing that outside the market kitchens there are further nutritional foods was intended to point out the stagnation of old butchering and boiling, so as to clarify that prolonging life is not singular; it did not mean that the affairs of ordering the world should entirely procure grass and stones. However, the efficacy of domestic animals rarely reaches a hundred years of age, whereas the excellence of lingzhi and atractylodes is frequently heard to bring a thousand years. Judged from this, why must an elder of seventy owe gratitude to a meat diet? It is only that those who confine themselves to a single domain have no technique other than this. I expect that 'not abruptly eliminating it from the world' is still what was said in the previous explanation: being unable to abruptly deprive people of their fixations. Having just achieved agreement, dare I not praise its goodness? Since you know it cannot be abruptly eliminated, perhaps you do not claim that the Dao ends here.