廣弘明集 18.27

18.27

The critique states: "'The net of heaven is vast'—is it coarse and so lets things slip through? 'Nothing is more visible than what is hidden, nothing is more manifest than what is subtle.' It is only that fullness and alteration are concealed within daily function, and deferred debts are obscure in their causal conditions." I reply: heavenly principle is dark and obscure; its shifting manifestations are hard to clarify. For now, one must deduce from the past what has already shown its signs, and examine the accomplished traces of retribution. As for good and evil, calamity and blessing: occasionally one sees an instance, but this is a chance encounter and coincidence of affairs, not a genuine verification by the unseen administrators. How is this clarified? If there were administrators, they should be like those who govern a state or head a household: no good, however minute, would go unrewarded; no evil, however fine, would fail to be punished. They would ensure that those who cultivate practice preserve their plain conduct, and those of extreme perversity suffer cruel calamity; only then would households that accumulate good receive lingering celebrations in later generations, and households that accumulate non-virtue bequeath calamity and blame to coming generations. But now it is not so: some have profound evil yet are never executed; some accumulate good yet calamity arrives; some walk in benevolence and righteousness yet perish; some act with rampant cruelty yet blessings descend. How could it be that there are no administrators, but rather that things naturally have an allotted destiny? If you take fullness and alteration as concealed within daily function, and deferred debts as obscure in causal conditions, this would only mean that the retribution is late and not pressing before one's eyes; it does not mean that good and evil are disordered and right and wrong cannot be verified. Deducing from this: when a person is born, nature and allotment are determined from of old. The good are good of themselves; it is not that they first have life and then practice goodness to attain goodness. The evil are evil of themselves; it is not that their fundamental allotment lacks evil and then, growing up, they practice evil to attain evil. Therefore we know that poverty, success, goodness, evil, folly, wisdom, longevity, and premature death are all allotted destiny. Allotted destiny is mystically determined in the primordial obscurity; how could one's traces of action alter what is natural? That "the net of heaven does not lose" and "the hidden and manifest, the subtle and obvious" are simply words of exhortation and instruction; they are not the ultimate attainment of what mystic clarity calls fundamental predetermination. Since you have not yet awakened to the principle of subtle deduction, how can allotted destiny be discerned? I fear that your earlier awakening will turn out to be a later realization. We have not yet set a day to meet; I send this for now as an upright discourse.