廣弘明集 22.18

22.18

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?