弘明集 4.33

4.33

Reply: You say: 'Can there be in the world an existent without form?' and so forth. Searching your intended purport, you seem not to dislike the existence of ghosts, but hold that ghosts should have material substance. Could you be deluded? Is it because the books of Tianzhu describe ghosts as a separate class of living beings? When the ancients took ghosts and spirits as their teaching, they set them forth in canonical scriptures and displayed them on tablets. Zheng Qiao and Wu Zha also considered this to be so. Therefore, when the Yunhe music was transformed six times, celestial spirits truly descended; when the Longmen music was completed in nine parts, human ghosts all arrived. You, sir, elegantly adhere to the Rites of Zhou, yet recently you neglect this meaning, and are just now questioning the existence of the formless—is this not a fragmented disputation?