集沙門不應拜俗等事 1.8

1.8

The "Precedents" clarify the matters of śramaṇas paying reverence from the Sui dynasty and earlier. Since the Great Dharma flowed eastward for more than six hundred years, faith and disparagement have alternated, and praise and blame have contended with each other. Often subjected to decline and repeatedly ordered to kneel and bow down, yet because this matter does not govern the state and its principle surpasses mundane constants, regarding it as destructive to the Way, the past practices have always been retained.