集沙門不應拜俗等事 2.22

2.22

When the treatise was completed, later there were guests living in retirement who, strolling under the bright moon on a night excursion, gathered together in the Dharma hall. They inquired, saying: 'Having respectfully investigated your elegant treatise, its grand destination is visible, and practically nothing remains to be heard. One day, testing and re-examining it, that which has not been fully articulated is only a few points. In our view, the moral standards of the śramaṇas are exceptional institutions that alter worldly custom, and the titular vessels of the Daoists; applied to sovereigns and parents, it is indeed fitting that they be sparing in physical respect. What is now doubted is that they have only just begun an enterprise that is difficult to accomplish, and remotely look to attain efficacy beyond transformation; their hidden benefit has no visible effect in the present, and their future recompense is mysterious and not yet realized. Yet they cause princes and dukes to make offerings and faithful gentlemen to bend their bodies. Are they not sitting and receiving such virtue, falling into the liability of premature calculation, and vainly receiving such grace—matching the reproach of eating without working?' The host, after a long pause, answered: 'Let me take an analogy from nearby for you worthy gentlemen. Suppose there is a person here who, upholding the sovereign's command, reaches far to the customs of distant lands that require nine interpreters. May I ask: should the king provide him with provisions and bestow upon him carriages and robes?' They answered: 'Indeed.' The host said: 'The analogy can be pursued. What is called a śramaṇa? It refers to one who can dispel the dark ignorance of worldly custom, and open the mysterious path beyond transformation. He is about to proceed with all under Heaven through the way of mutual forgetting, causing those who aspire to the heights to drink of his lingering style, and those who rinse in the stream to taste his remaining dew. If so, although the great enterprise is not yet completed, looking at the tracks of his transcendent steps, that to which he has awakened is already vast! Moreover, the kāṣāya is not courtly attire, and the alms bowl is not a vessel for royal chambers. Śramaṇas are people beyond the dust, and should not pay reverence to kings. Thus the merit of their pervasive transmission and the benefit of maintaining their existence have not yet repaid the aspiration of their initial vows—how much less could they repay the labor of the three actions? Furthermore, though such a person's physical form relies on sustenance, his feelings harbor no worldly attachments; he views the offerings of the four necessities as if gnats were passing before him. How could the favor of moistening with foam be worth mentioning?' The guests thereupon first awakened to the fact that the unseen path takes opening the way as its efficacy, and that stilling the mind takes ultimate purity as the Way. Delighted and comforted in mind, chanting and conversing, they retired.