廣弘明集 5.3

5.3

The delusions of the worldly fall roughly into two kinds. First, they are deluded into taking the Buddha as an illusion and a fabrication designed only to skillfully guide human minds. Second, they are deluded regarding cause and effect, regarding it as obscure and unprovable, and so they cherish and esteem solely their physical bodies and worldly lives. Yet the Buddha is called the Great Awakened One: his illumination reaches to the utmost origins of latent capacities. He scrutinizes the manifold inclinations of nature and desire, and masters the expedient methods of matching medicines to diseases. Thus he could condescend to manifest a golden presence and display a majestic physical form of sixteen feet. His radiant light shone everywhere, penetrating the great trichiliocosm to propagate the transformation, causing those who received his Way to attain the realization as numerous as sands of dust, within overthrowing the entanglements of the ten fetters, and without sweeping away the impairments of the eight māras. Therefore he could tread water and fire without obstruction, and subdue nāgas and ghosts while keeping the spirit at peace. With the three vidyās and the six supernatural knowledges, he gave full play to the marvelous techniques of the spiritual heart; with the four unhindered eloquence-powers and the eight liberations, he opened the broad highway to shelter all beings. His Way is conspicuous and manifest, yet it is utterly hard to recount in full. As for Old Li, who spoke of the "Dao", he merely elaborated two chapters. In name and rank he was a historiographer of the Zhou, and his learning was that of a single Zhou petty clerk. He was born in Lixiang and died in Huaili. Master Zhuang may be taken as a reliable record, and Qin Yi certainly made no baseless discourse. Yet the historian Qian praised him, saying that he fled westward to the drifting sands; Emperor Jing of the Han believed this, and only then was the study of Dao opened in the eastern lands. Thereafter, his lineage gradually spread, but ultimately it remained mired in the Divine Land. Severing wisdom and keeping to the feminine was completely unheard of throughout the seas. Ignorant worldly people, putting their trust in this, embellished falsehood and presented it as truth, and so composed such scriptures as Laozi's Conversion of the Barbarians, mimicking the Buddhist teachings of the four fruits, the ten grounds, and the cyclical revolutions of kalpas. They moulded earth to make humans, had Avalokiteśvara attend upon the Old Master, used Yellow Writings to deliver life, and deployed Red Talismans to ward off calamities by incantations. Such words are reckless and not worth mentioning. Just when they sought to surpass the Buddha, transcend the Dharma and Saṅgha, and distort customs to make themselves the supreme peak, those with penetrating discernment and farsighted knowledge naturally severed themselves from vulgar habits, whereas petty scholars lost in the crossing might together sink and drown. Moreover, the two chapters on Dao and De were spoken by Juanzi, and Boyang transmitted them as Yin; this was transmitting without creating. As for the four fruits and below, they are not of the Daoist stream at all. This was later disciples and students opening broad avenues of arts, citing analogues whenever they spoke, which on the contrary encumbered their original school. Therefore the Biographies of the Immortals states: 'Ignorant Daoists basely transmitted that Laozi was the state preceptor generation after generation—how spurious!' Ge Hong can be said to be a scholar of innate knowledge, an encounter of a thousand years; all the rest are mediocre, claiming equality while running abreast. Buddhist scriptures contain no account of Li Dan, yet Daoist writings draw heavily from the Buddha's teachings. Men of the world admire antiquity—a common saying of ancient proverbs; hating to stay beneath others—the practice of today's vulgar crowd. Thus, whatever forms exist, they mimic them without exception. The Dao is fundamentally qi; it has no image to depict. Now they imitate the Buddha's golden presence, and line up the celestial halls and the hells; continuously copying and practicing the five precepts and the ten good deeds, they have never had any distinct trace of their own. In the end, their talent and capacity are feeble and weak, unable to establish their own doctrinal school, so they steal scriptures and pilfer meanings, leaning on them to speak of the Dao. As for Yang Xiong's Taixuan, it stood distinctly apart; the Baopuzi's discussion of the Dao opened expedients far off. The likes of Zhuang and Hui may be counted as renowned works, and the Nanhuai which emerged recently is also sufficient to name a master. How could these compare to taking the primal secret of the Sovereign of Heaven, adopting the title of Han Che, bursting forth from the left armpit, and using it to emulate the conduct of the Capable and Benevolent One? Paths like these are manifold; all will be shown below. Furthermore, the worldly are deluded about the karma of the three periods of time, and currently make light of retribution in the four destinies. They think human death is the ultimate end of this life, and in living they know not where they go. Due to this they are sunken and mired, with no chance of deliverance. If I do not systematically narrate it, their enduring delusion will wander even farther. Though deeply averse to prolixity, how could I omit it? The preface also states: Now the arising of understanding or delusion resides in broad observation; righteous endeavors rely on transmitted accounts. To put one's trust darkly in uncertain reports makes it difficult to discern the helmsman. Therefore the four kinds of indestructible purity hold the position at the beginning of entering the stream; only the one collection of the properly determined can be called the domain of stepping into rectitude. The rest are like light feathers first dyed: tossed and turned by the wind, they cannot achieve non-retrogression; though black-lacquered wood is polished, it cannot be made white. Therefore, to discern delusion and walk in rectitude opens the capacity for awakening and penetrating; to settle the form and find peace in the Way must rely on the virtue of investigating illumination. Ever since the Dharma flowed into Cīnasthāna, faith and slander have encroached upon one another, mostly stemming from arbitrary judgment and dictatorial decisions born of self-opinion. Matters that are inevitable across the three periods of time they call parables; forms that are manifest in the six realms of rebirth they call empty references. Now, the cycle of birth and death goes and returns according to karma; taking on a physical body according to each thought-moment, consciousness is transmitted through kalpa after kalpa. Therefore the flower of Haoshang wrote the discourse on 'simultaneous birth'; the sage under the pillar declared that 'its ghosts are not spirits'. It can be said that while the long duration has an end, the course of lives is inexhaustible. After Yu's father had transformed into a yellow bear, the King of Han turned into a blue hound. Pengsheng appeared as a boar, an event manifest to the Duke of Qi; Yuanbo's dangling hat-strings made his name exalted in the Han history. Such paths are numerous; it is hard to record them fully upon one's sash. Ignorant folk groundlessly make excuses, straightway saying that 'the three sovereigns in heaven' was merely an elevated rule for exhortation, and that setting out sacrifices for ghosts to feast was an expedient scheme for the way of filial piety. This contravenes the canons and models of human relations, and oversteps the customary actions of the heavenly constancy; deceptive scriptures that disorder vulgar ways are not worth discussing. As for the tales in the line of wandering souls, and the matters of former bodies narrated in the scriptures, the zhaomu order has its proper sequence, revering ancestors and honoring parents; pursuing the distant and being careful at the end has ever been revered in common. Trampling on frost awakens emotion, an enduring ethical norm across the generations. How could one cast aside one's progenitors and exclusively preserve oneself, recklessly propounding the discourse that ghosts do not exist, while boasting of techniques for preserving the physical body? The previous collection already discussed this, and now I clarify and reveal it once more. It is essential to collate terms and principles, and search out the scriptures and treatises: five thousand fascicles have all been scrutinized by my own eyes, with meanings penetrating the eight repositories, marvelously discerning their essential destination. With such wide attainment, one is completely freed from recurring delusions. I submit that the six causes and four conditions, mounting goodness and evil, bring about karma; the four forms of birth and six realms of rebirth continue the retributions of ascent and descent. This path is level and plain, yet without study one cannot reach it. How could one believe the arbitrary surmises of ordinary fools and reject the clear strategies of the Great Sage? What is more, he arrays the benevolent vessel of the ten perfections to ferry those of great mind across the ocean of suffering; he distinguishes the steps of the four truths to guide small wits away from the mountain of heterodoxy; using the three trainings to unify the two vehicles, and the four wheels to crush the eight difficulties. If the outline is like this, there is no ground for delusion. Moreover, because temples and stūpas were lavish and magnificent, wasting wealth and material, and the offerings and alms to the saṅgha were misappropriated and usurped in the fields of merit, offenses became increasingly flagrant, inviting the ridicule and disgust of contemporary customs, so that the Buddha Dharma was collectively defiled and wholly buried. Therefore the two martial emperors of Zhou and Wei were originally born in the dark regions of Youdu; the two rulers of Helian were mere descendants of the Xianyun. Their lands were not realms of benevolence and righteousness, and their natures completely lacked the heart for moral cultivation. That they arbitrarily enacted destruction is truly not to be wondered at. Now I compile and arrange the successive dynasties, editing them in sequence, in the hope that those lost and submerged may open this and attain awakening. This is what the preface says.