弘明集 9.86

9.86

The challenger says: What your treatise says at present are all statements of personal opinion, and are not the sage's intent. Please allow me to cite canonical records to prove the teaching of the sages. The Classic of Filial Piety says: 'Formerly, the Duke of Zhou performed the suburban sacrifice to Houji to correlate with Heaven, and performed the ancestral sacrifice to King Wen in the Hall of Light to correlate with the Lord on High.' If corporeal form and spirit are both extinguished, who would correlate with Heaven? Who would correlate with the Lord? Moreover, regarding 'having no ministers yet acting as if one had them,' Xuanni said: 'Can Heaven be deceived?' Now Ji has no spirit, yet he correlated Ji [with Heaven]—was Zhou Dan deceiving Heaven? If indeed there were no Ji, and he correlated him with Heaven in vain, then that would be deceiving Heaven, and furthermore deceiving people. This would mean the teaching of the sage is to teach deception and falsehood. If he established teachings through deception and falsehood, how would that express the heart of a filial son or encourage frivolous and petty minds? In tracing the treatise's purport, it takes the nonexistence of ghosts as its doctrine. Let me question it again: Confucius sacrificed vegetable broth and water-plant chestnuts to his ancestors. The Rites say: 'Music welcomes their arrival; grief accompanies their departure.' Since the spirit does not exist, what is there to welcome? Since the spirit does not exist, what is there to escort away? To welcome their arrival with music would be to feign joy on Kong's face; to escort them away in grief would be to shed empty tears from Qiu's body. In that case, the Master's sacrificial rites would be duplicity filling his mind and falsehood filling the ancestral hall. Could the teachings of the sages be like this? Why then do you say: 'Such is the teaching of the sages'?