廣弘明集 3.14

3.14

The first explanation states: How can objects vast and distant be measured? What people today know best is nothing other than heaven and earth. Heaven is pure qi; the sun is the essence of yang; the moon is the essence of yin; and the stars are the essence of the myriad things. This is what the Confucians accept as settled. Yet when a star falls, it turns out to be a stone. If this essence were a stone, it could have no luminous nature, and its substance being heavy, to what could it be tethered? The diameter of a single star, in the larger cases, is a hundred li; the head and tail of a single lunar lodge are tens of thousands of li apart. With things of a hundred li linked together by the tens of thousands, their width, breadth, length, and slant never expand or contract. Moreover, the stars share the same light and color as the sun and moon, differing only in gradation of size. But then, could the sun and moon also be stones? If stone is solid and dense, how could the crow and the hare fit within it? If stones are suspended within the qi, how could they revolve on their own? If the sun, moon, and stars are all qi, the substance of qi is light and floating, so it should unite with heaven, revolving back and forth without departing from it. How could their speeds theoretically not be uniform? Why is it that the sun, the moon, the five planets, and the twenty-eight lunar lodges each have their own degrees, moving unevenly? How could falling qi suddenly transform into stone? Since the earth is dross and turbid, its nature ought to be heavy and sunken. Yet when one digs into the soil, springs are found; it floats upon water. Beneath this accumulated water, what other things exist? From where do the rivers and hundred valleys arise? Flowing east to the sea, why does it not overflow? Into what place do Guitang and Weilu drain? By what qi are the rocks of Wojiao set ablaze? By whom is the ebb and flow of the tides regulated? The Heavenly Han is suspended overhead; why does it not scatter and fall? The nature of water is to descend; why does it surge upward? When heaven and earth first opened, the stars and lodges already existed. When the Nine Provinces were not yet marked out and the various states were not yet divided, according to what were the demarcations and territories assigned to their celestial courses? Who has regulated and partitioned them since the enfeoffment of the states? States have increased and decreased, yet the stars neither advance nor retreat. Calamities, auspicious omens, disasters, and blessings nevertheless occur without error. With the celestial patterns so vast and the assembled stars so manifold, why should their allotted fields pertain solely to the Central States? If the Pleiades are the Mao banner, the station of the Xiongnu, are the Western Hu, the Eastern Yi, the tattooed-forehead tribes, and the Jiaozhi alone to be abandoned? Investigating in this manner, in the end nothing can be fully explained. How can one, through ordinary human affairs, dogmatically determine what lies beyond the universe?