弘明集 5.43

5.43

The questioner asks: "The author of the treatise takes the exhaustion of transformation as the ultimate; therefore, one who attains the ultimate must go against transformation to seek the root principle. Seeking the root principle does not come from complying with transformation; for this reason, he cites the successive generations of sovereigns to align them with the Buddhist teaching, claiming that those who attained the ultimate ruled as kings through expedient means. This is what the refined treatise relies upon, presuming on an overarching comprehensiveness. Yet when we seek its practical truth, the principle is not so.

"Why is this? The endowment of qi is limited to a single lifetime. When life is exhausted, it dissolves and becomes nothingness. Although the spirit is a subtle entity, it is nevertheless merely the transformation of yin and yang. Having transformed into life, it transforms again into death; having gathered to form the beginning, it disperses to form the end. Inferring from this, we know that spirit and corporeal form transform together, originally without separate lineages. The fine and the coarse are of one qi, dwelling together from beginning to end. When the dwelling is intact, the qi gathers and there is sentience; when the dwelling is destroyed, the qi disperses and illumination is extinguished. When it disperses, it returns what it received to the Great Root; when it is extinguished, it returns again to nothingness. The cycles of reversal and termination are all the natural course of things—who could be doing this?

"Even if their roots were different qi and they only transformed together when their numbers combined, the spirit's abiding in the corporeal form would still be like fire being in wood: their generation is necessarily simultaneous, and their destruction is necessarily mutual extinction. When the corporeal form separates, the spirit disperses and has nothing to lodge in; when the wood decays, the fire is silenced and has nothing to rely on. The principle is naturally so.

"Even if the distinction between identity and difference is obscure and hard to clarify, the doctrine of existence and non-existence must reside in gathering and dispersing. Gathering and dispersing are the general names for the transformation of qi and the generation and extinction of the myriad transformations. Therefore, Zhuangzi said: 'The life of human beings is a gathering of qi; when it gathers, there is life, and when it disperses, there is death. If death and life are companions, what affliction do I have?' The ancients who were skilled at speaking of the Dao must have attained something of this. If it is indeed so, the ultimate principle is limited to a single lifetime: when life is exhausted, there is no further transformation. The meaning can be verified."