弘明集 9.75

9.75

[The guest] objected: The treatise says, 'How could the spirit of a sage be lodged in the capacity of an ordinary person? Nor is there an ordinary person's spirit lodged in the body of a sage.' Now Yang Huo resembled Zhongni, and Xiang Ji resembled the Emperor Shun; this is precisely an ordinary person's spirit lodged in the body of a sage. Min stone and jade, the yu bird and the phoenix cannot serve as an analogy. For min stone is of itself called min stone, while jade is truly named jade; the yu is called yu bird, while the phoenix is called the divine phoenix. Their names already differ, and their appearances also fail to match their reality. Now Shun had double pupils, and Xiang Yu also had double pupils; there were not two different names like min and jade, but one only saw their double pupils resembling each other. Furthermore, Nüwa had a serpent's body, and Gaoyao had a horse's mouth; not only did sagely spirits enter into ordinary vessels, but they even came to dwell in the bodies of insects and beasts. This distinct difference between form and spirit, their difference in illumination and darkness, becomes all the more evident here! If form and spirit were one, and in principle cut off from past causes, then a sage should give birth to a sage, and a worthy must produce a worthy; the brave, the cowardly, the foolish, and the wise would all resemble their origin, being shaped by form and spirit and nurtured by the single qi. Then one could not have the sagacious Yao and the obstinate Danzhu, or the blind and stubborn Gu Sou and the sagely Shun. The treatise also says: 'Sages are identical in sagely qi, yet their vessels need not be identical, just as horses differ in coat yet are equally swift.' Now is the coat itself the vessel of swiftness? When horses share the same coat color yet differ in being nags or thoroughbreds, it shows that the coat is not a sign of swiftness, just as the body is not a sagely vessel. The human corporeal frame has no distinction of ordinary or sage, but has differences in durability and fragility; thus an enduring spirit resides in an enduring substance, while a fleeting spirit stays in a transient body. It is merely this and nothing more. What was meant earlier by 'the body of a sage' directly referred to the physical forms of Confucius and Shun, not that their capacities possessed sagely wisdom. This is not a contradictory argument; do not approach this confusion.