廣弘明集 22.18

22.18

含生之類識鑒相懸。等級參差千累萬沓。昆蟲則不逮飛禽。飛禽則不逮犬馬。昺明昭著不得謂之不然。又人品以上賢愚殊性。不相窺涉不相曉解。燕北越南未足云匹。其愚者則不辯菽麥。悖者則不知愛敬。自斯以上性識漸弘。班固九品曾未概其萬一。何者賢之與愚。蓋由知與不知也。愚者所知則少。賢者所知則多。而萬物交加。群方緬曠。情性曉昧。理趣深玄。由其塗求其理。既有曉昧之異。遂成高下之差。自此相傾品級彌峻。窮其原本盡其宗極。互相推仰應有所窮。其路既窮無微不盡。又不得謂不然也。且五情各有分域。耳目各有司存。心運則形忘。目用則耳廢。何則情靈淺弱心慮雜擾。一念而兼無由可至。既不能兼紛糺遞襲。一念未成他端互起。互起眾端復同前不相兼之由。由於淺惑。惑淺為病。病於滯有。不淺不惑出於兼忘。以此兼忘得此兼照。自凡夫至于正覺。始惑於不惑。不兼至能兼。又不得謂不然也。又昆蟲夭促含靈靡二。或朝生夕殞。或不識春秋。自斯而進脩短不一。既有其短豈得無長。虛用損年善攝增壽。善而又善焉得無之。又不得謂之不然也。生既可夭則壽不可無夭。夭既無矣則生不可極。形神之別斯既然矣。然形既可養神寧獨異。神妙形麁較然有辯。養形可至不朽。養神安得有窮。養神不窮。不生不滅。始末相校豈無其人。自凡及聖含靈義等。但事有精麁。故人有凡聖。聖既長存在凡獨滅。本同末異義不兼通。大聖貽訓豈惑斯哉。

Among sentient kinds, cognitive discernment differs vastly, with uneven gradations piling up by thousands and myriad layers. Insects do not equal flying birds; flying birds do not equal dogs and horses. Clear and distinct as this is, one cannot say it is not so. Furthermore, from the human grade upward, the natures of the worthy and the foolish diverge; they do not interact with or understand one another, so that north of Yan and south of Yue cannot serve as an adequate comparison. The foolish among them cannot distinguish beans from wheat; the perverse do not know love and respect. Progressing upward from this, the nature and understanding gradually broaden; Ban Gu's nine grades do not encompass a ten-thousandth of it. Why is this? The distinction between the worthy and the foolish stems from knowing and not knowing. What the foolish know is little; what the worthy know is much. Yet myriad things intertwine, diverse regions are vast, emotional natures are either clear or dim, and the purports of principle are deep and mysterious. Seeking the principle along their respective paths, because there are differences of clarity and dimness, gradations of high and low are formed. Tipping toward one another from here, the ranks become ever steeper. Exhausting their origins and plumbing their ultimate foundations, their mutual reverence must have a point of culmination; when that path is exhausted, nothing subtle remains unplumbed. Again, one cannot say it is not so. Moreover, the five senses each have their separate realms; the ears and eyes each have their assigned duties. When the mind moves, the physical form is forgotten; when the eyes are employed, the ears are neglected. Why is this? Because the emotional spirit is shallow and weak, and mental deliberations are turbulent and confused. To encompass both in a single thought is impossible to achieve. Since one cannot encompass both, confusion and entanglement alternate: before one thought is completed, other concerns arise in succession. The successive arising of multiple concerns again stems from the same cause of inability to encompass both. This is due to shallow delusion. Taking shallow delusion as an illness, one is afflicted by clinging to existence. To be neither shallow nor deluded comes from dual forgetting; through this dual forgetting, one attains this comprehensive illumination. From an ordinary mortal up to the Rightly Awakened One, one progresses from delusion to non-delusion, from inability to encompass to ability to encompass. Again, one cannot say it is not so. Furthermore, insects have short and fleeting lives, yet their sentient nature is no different. Some are born in the morning and perish by evening; some know neither spring nor autumn. Progressing from this, long and short life spans vary; since there is shortness, how could there not be length? Vain expenditure diminishes years; skillful nourishment increases longevity. Becoming better and still better, how could this not exist? Again, one cannot say it is not so. Since life can be cut short, then in longevity there cannot be non-death; yet when cutting short is absent, life cannot be limited. The distinction between physical form and spirit is indeed like this. Yet since the physical form can be nourished, how could the spirit alone be different? The spirit is subtle and the physical form is coarse, with a clear distinction between them. If nourishing the form can lead to incorruptibility, how could nourishing the spirit ever have an end? Nourishing the spirit without end is neither born nor extinguished; comparing beginning to end, how could there not be such a person? From the ordinary mortal to the sage, the meaning of sentience is equal; it is only because matters have the refined and the coarse that people have the ordinary and the sagely. If the sage is eternally existent while the ordinary mortal alone is extinguished, then being fundamentally the same yet divergent at the end is an untenable doctrine. How could the Great Sage's bequeathed instructions be confused about this?