弘明集 8.41

8.41

The Treatise Destroying Delusions states: Dwelling in a corporeal form and endowed with consciousness, the principle is determined by previous karma; entering the Way or abiding in the secular, matters are tied to cause and effect. Therefore, when Śākyamuni appeared in the world, his transformation extended to devas and humans; both those ruling the state and those managing the household realized the traces of the Way. We have never heard that everyone in the world universally left the household together. This is truly because conditions and resonances are not uniform; hence the nominal teachings are twofold, which is why the civil gentry and the śramaṇas differ. However, in initially pulling oneself out of the realm of defilement, the principle relies on precepts and concentration. A wife is an encumbrance of affection; hair is an adornment of the body. Encumbrances of affection harm the spirit; bodily adornments run counter to the Way. Therefore, one purifies the spirit, extinguishes affection, cultivates the Way, and discards adornments. Since the principle transcends ordinary standards, the teaching must inevitably reverse secular ways. As for not kneeling to one's parents, it is because the Way is venerable; parents bowing to them is also because they revere the Way. According to the rites, when one first puts on the cap and sees his mother, his mother bows to him; admiring his complete virtue, she bends what is venerable to salute what is lowly. A soldier in helmet and armor does not bow when seeing his lord; prizing his bearing of weapons, veneration is not required. The black cap is a light headpiece and originally has no spiritual Dao; armor and helmet are inauspicious implements and have no ultimate virtue. Yet when circumstances require additional reverence, the mother bows to her son; when conditions make it fitting to suspend homage, the minister does not kneel to the ruler. Ritual codes and secular teachings were instituted by the Duke of Zhou and Confucius; discussing their flexibility, they did not follow a single track. How much more so the venerability of the Buddha's Way, which rises beyond the three realms! Its spiritual teaching and subtle origin draw the multitudes to the profound principle. Applying this to human beings, it is truly more venerable than cap or armor. Violations of ritual etiquette for the cap and armor have not been doubted from ancient times to the present; what is there to find strange in paying heightened reverence to the Buddha's Way?