廣弘明集 9.69

9.69

Your subject laughs and says: Examining ‘Gautama’, this refers to Śākya. The Scripture of Converting the Barbarians says that in the third year of the Benchuxin era of King Zhuang of Zhou, the cyclical year bingchen, the Crown Prince of Śuddhodana, having attained true awakening, was titled the Buddha Śākya. Laozi, seeing that he had departed the world and fearing that people would become remiss, descended again to the village of Tala, where he was named Kāśyapa, attended closely upon the Buddha, cremated his corpse to collect the relics, and erected stūpas to distribute them. If it were as the above text says, before Śākya was even born, Gautama could not have been dispatched in advance to the Eastern Land. If he had already been born and become a Buddha, there would be no reason why, in the interim, he could have received instructions from Kāśyapa to serve as an envoy for a thousand years. How could a bodhisattva closely attend the Buddha and yet command the Buddha to serve as an envoy? Furthermore, the reign of King Zhuang of Zhou lasted only fifteen years; its first year was yiyou, and it did not contain a bingchen year at all. How could the era-title ‘Benchu’ be so erroneous as this? It is truly enough to make one cover one's ears, and enough to make the Most High stamp upon the ground in wrath!