廣弘明集 13.135

13.135

外論曰。夫國以民為本。本固則邦寧。是以賜及育子之門。恩流孕婦之室。故子孫享祀世載不虧。雖至孝毀窮不令絕祀。故得國家富強天下昌盛。未聞人民彫盡家國可存。今佛教即不妻不娶。名為奉法。唯事早逝。號得涅槃。既闕長生之方。又無不死之術。斯一世之中家國空矣。俗人雖欲求福。不知形命以殘。競慕家安。豈覺宗禋久滅。可謂畏死而服苟吻。懼溺而赴長河。且天皇地皇之世。無佛而祚延。後趙後魏已來。有僧而運促。正由真偽混雜禮樂不調。世不能知。其迷五也。

The external treatise says: The state takes the people as its foundation; when the foundation is solid, the country is peaceful. For this reason, bounties are extended to households raising children, and grace flows to the chambers of pregnant women. Thus descendants perform ancestral sacrifices without interruption through the generations. Even when filial piety is exhausted in deepest mourning, ancestral sacrifices are not allowed to be extinguished; this allows the state to be wealthy and strong, and the world to flourish. One has never heard that when the people are completely exhausted, families and the state can survive. Now, the Buddhist teachings hold that not taking a wife and not marrying is called upholding the Dharma; they attend only to an early demise, calling it attaining nirvāṇa. Lacking the methods for longevity and without the arts of immortality, within a single generation families and the state would become empty. Although worldly people desire to seek blessings, they do not realize that their physical lives are thereby harmed; while eagerly longing for family peace, how do they perceive that their ancestral sacrifices have long been extinguished? This can be called swallowing poison out of fear of death, or leaping into a great river out of dread of drowning. Furthermore, in the eras of the Heavenly Sovereign and Earthly Sovereign, there was no Buddha, yet their dynasties endured; since the Later Zhao and Later Northern Wei, there have been monks, yet their dynastic fortunes were cut short. This is precisely because the true and false were mixed together, and ritual and music were discordant. The world cannot recognize this. This is their fifth confusion.