廣弘明集 22.24

22.24

Moreover, if the substance of one knife is divided into the shapes of two knives, the shapes are already divided, yet each has its sharpness. Now, if you take the body of an ox and cut it into two, the life that drinks and grazes instantly ceases, and its capacity to bear heavy loads cannot be divided. How then can one use the knife and its sharpness to analogise the body and its spirit? Your treatise states that the knife and its sharpness are just like the body possessing a spirit: the knife across its entire substance has a single sharpness, and the body across its entire substance has a single spirit. When the spirit functions in the body, there are the distinctions of ears, eyes, hands, and feet: the function of the hands cannot serve as the function of the feet, and the function of the ears cannot serve as the function of the eyes. Yet the functioning of sharpness is universally applicable: it can sever flood-dragons and serpents, and it can slice through wild geese; it is not that one part exclusively can cut melons from Dongling, while another part exclusively can cut bamboo from the Southern Mountains.