弘明集 9.38

9.38

Objection: The treatise says that human material substance has sentience and wood's material substance lacks sentience. Is this not because humans recognize cold and warmth, feel pain and itching, live when nurtured, and die when harmed? But wood is also like this: in spring it flourishes, in autumn it withers; planted, it must live, uprooted, it must die. How can you call it insentient? Now human material substance is just like wood: when the spirit remains, the corporeal form stands; when the spirit departs, the corporeal form falls into ruin. Standing is the flourishing tree; falling into ruin is the withered tree. How do you argue that this is not the sentience of the spirit, but instead claim that the material substance has sentience? All of the myriad beings have sentience through the spirit; none have sentience through material substance. It is only that the nature of plants and insects barely perceives flourishing and withering, life and death, whereas the consciousness of living human beings comprehends security and danger, benefit and harm. Why say that humans do not have a material substance like wood to serve as corporeal form, and also have a sentience different from wood to serve as spirit? Thus corporeal form and spirit are two, and their dwelling places can be distinguished. It is simply that wood receives an uneven qi of yin and yang, while humans contain the refined illumination of a singular soul. Their perception may be alike, but their spirits are different. The debate on skeletal remains and physical bodies, and the discussion of the transmission of life and death, have already been determined in principle, and [your claims] are unprecedented in affairs. What is the use of your tortuous arguments?