廣弘明集 7.6

7.6

A native of Yingchuan. Later he resided in Jiangzuo. He read widely across various books and had an unconventional temperament that defied vulgar conventions. Originally, he and Emperor Wu of the Liang were commoner acquaintances. When the emperor ascended the throne, [Ji's] official career did not match his ambitions. Bearing resentment, Ji said: 'One day I will grind ink on his eyebrows and nose to write an檄 [indictment]!' The emperor was deeply displeased with him. When Yin Zichun, the Inspector of Liangzhou, was demoted, Ji wrote a great poem and presented it to him, the text of which circulated widely among contemporaries. Someone praised it to the emperor, but the emperor said: 'Although this person has talent, he confuses customs and loves rebellion; he cannot be employed.' Because Ji could not fulfill his ambitions, he constantly harbored sullen depression for over twenty years. Seeing that the emperor trusted and revered the Buddhist lineage, and that temples and images flourished, he thereupon submitted a memorial arguing that Buddhism was greedy, lewd, extravagant, and deceitful. He also criticized the construction of Tongtai Temple, saying that its excessive expenditures would surely bring about disasters. His memorial stated in summary: 'The Three Fen and Five Dian are the paramount texts of emperors and monarchs; the Four Cardinal Virtues and Six Principles are the perpetual models from ancient times. Coming to Emperor Wu of Han sacrificing to the golden men, Wang Mang's Xin dynasty was established; when Huan and Ling sacrificed to the Buddha, eunuchs seized power. From this, the Three Kingdoms stood like a tripod, and the Five Barbarians successively encroached. The capped and robed nobility fled east of the Yangtze, and the barbarian religion arose in the Central Plains. It has caused the affection between father and son to be severed, the righteousness between ruler and minister to be perverted, the harmony between husband and wife to be neglected, and the trust between friends to be cut off; the realm within the seas has been chaotic for three hundred years.' The accusations raised by Ji merely describe the deviant; as for chaste integrity transcending the world, he certainly did not relate it. This is bias. Stating that the initial descent of the golden man brought about the usurpation of the Xin dynasty and the like are all arbitrary analogies. As for the Zhou executing King Zhou, did they ever see Buddhist sutras? The Qin burying Confucian scholars had nothing to do with Buddhist transformation. When rites collapsed and music decayed, they had not seen the Buddha. When the Warring States lacked a sovereign, what had that to do with the deceit of monks? He claims that the social order was disrupted, but how could [Buddhism] disrupt it? As for husbands and wives, fathers and sons, who is not like that? These are merely reckless words, not worth recounting. However, that Ji went to extremes in defaming monks and deeply vilifying the Buddha was because he thoroughly knew his memorial would not accord with the imperial will, and also knew he could not eradicate the Buddhist Dharma; he was simply resentful that the emperor did not raise him from obscurity or grant him an honored office at court. Therefore, using vulgar words to curse monks and deep phrasing to vilify the Buddha was actually to lodge his intent to insult the emperor on high. Subsequent scurrilous writings all imitated this.