辯正論 6.106

6.106

內箴曰。謀道不先於食。守信必後於飢。是以桀溺務耕。孔子譬諸禽獸。樊須學稼。仲尼譏於小人。稷下無位而招祿。高其賢也。黔婁非仕而獲賜。尚其清也。善人之道何必耕稼。請為吾子言之。釋教驗於因果。該三世之洪源。仙道尚於金玉。勞一生之虛費。何者夫賢愚壽夭信于指掌。貧富貴賤昭於目前。報應則形影無差。業緣亦聲響不異。此其指也。未見服丹不死餌液長生。古詩云。服食求神仙。多為藥所誤。不如飲美酒。被服紈與素。寄語後世人。道士慎莫作。言虛棄功夫。浪殀年壽也。汝有轉練之方。何因更請田地。又談織絍之婦。必知並畜妻房。故應道士專耕女官懃織。何為莫充糊口恒闕資身。如其不織不耕即墮貧處。竊見樓觀黃巾。脫鹿皮而[耒*(世/冉)]地。玄都鬼卒。捨橫帔而偶耕。既無絕粒之人。頗慚客作之倦。自舂自磨餧在其中。勞形怵心何道之有。尋漢安元年歲在壬午。道士張陵分別黃書云。男女有和合之法。三五七九交接之道。其道真決在於丹田。丹田者玉門也。唯以禁祕為急。不許泄於道路。道路溺孔也。呼為師友父母臭根之名。又云。女兒未嫁者。十四已上有決明之道。故注五千文云。道可道者。謂朝食美也。非常道者。謂暮成屎也。兩者同出而異名。謂人根生溺。溺出精也。玄之又玄者。謂鼻與口也。陵美此術子孫三世相繼行之。汝法如是穢亂生民。若觀百姓依汝法行。則不孝不恭。世出犲狼之種。無禮無義。家生梟鏡之兒明矣。夫辨奇貨者。採驪珠不忌九洄之深。求華璞者。追藍琰無憚三襲之險。貴其寶也。慕至道者。窺其戶牖。輕勢利於鴻毛。入其隩隅。忽榮位於脫屣。重其真也。故能使勌夫不愛其力。貧客不悋其財。蓋希冥益非其迷也。至若仙術誕妄源流久矣。韓終徐市始詐於秦邦。文成五利紹偽於漢國。敘控鶴弗克陵雲之實。言餐霞莫覩療飢之信。致有猱猨蜃蛤之論。注曹植辨道論云。仙人者黨猱猨之屬。與世人得道化為仙人。夫雉入海化為蛤。燕入海化為蜃。當其徘徊其翼差池其羽猶自識也。忽然自投神化體變。乃更為魚鱉。豈復識翻翔林薄巢垣屋之娛乎。牛哀病而為虎。逢其兄而噬之。若此者何貴於變化耶。繫風捕影之談。故棄實瓠者。以非器也。廢石田者。以難墾也。賤左道者。以虛偽也。蓋檢實則稱其所同。究虛則集其所異。理符則世重。情詭則物違。故常事耳。豈曰迷乎。卑道尊佛不亦可矣。而弗自知。其盲四也。

The internal admonition says: Seeking the Way does not take precedence over eating; keeping faith must come after hunger. Therefore, when Jie Ni devoted himself to tilling, Confucius likened him to birds and beasts; when Fan Xu asked to learn agriculture, Zhongni derided him as a petty man. At Jixia, scholars held no official posts yet were provided stipends, for their worth was held in high esteem; Qianlou did not serve in office yet received gifts, for his purity was venerated. Why must the way of a good person depend on tilling and sowing? Allow me to explain it to you, my friend. The Buddhist teaching is verified by cause and effect, encompassing the vast source of the three periods of time; the immortal way prizes gold and jade, toiling through a single lifetime in vain expenditure. Why so? The worthy and foolish, longevity and premature death, are reliable as the palm of one's hand; poverty and wealth, high station and low, are manifest before one's eyes. Retribution matches like form and shadow without disparity; karmic conditions are like sound and echo without difference. This is its thrust. One has never seen anyone take cinnabar and not die, or swallow elixirs and attain long life. An ancient poem says: / 'Swallowing elixirs to seek immortality / mostly leads to being deceived by medicines. / Better to drink fine wine / and dress in fine silk and raw white silk.' / Send word to later generations: / Daoist masters, take care not to act so! / Such words are empty and waste one's efforts, / recklessly cutting short one's lifespan. If you possess methods for boiling and refining silk, why do you constantly ask for farmlands? Furthermore, you speak of women who weave; surely you know that they are also kept as wives. Thus Daoist masters should specialize in tilling, and female officials should diligently weave. Why then can they not provide for their sustenance and are always lacking what is necessary to support themselves? If they do not weave and do not till, they immediately fall into poverty. I have personally observed the Yellow Turbans of Louguan strip off deer skins to plow the ground, and the ghost soldiers of the Mysterious Capital cast aside their crosswise sashes to till in pairs. Since there is no one who can do without grain, they are quite ashamed of the exhaustion of doing hired labor. Pounding and grinding by themselves, hunger is found in their midst; fatiguing their bodies and terrifying their minds, what Dao is there in this? Examining the first year of the Han'an reign, in the year of Renwu (142 CE), the Daoist master Zhang Ling distinguished the *Huangshu* (Yellow Book), saying: 'Men and women have methods of harmony and copulation, the ways of union of three, five, seven, and nine. The true secret of this way lies in the dantian; the dantian is the jade gate. One must make secrecy a matter of utmost urgency, not permitting it to be leaked on the roadway; the roadway is the urinary tract.' He called this the names of the foul roots of teachers, friends, and parents. He also said: 'For unmarried daughters, from the age of fourteen upward there is the way of the Cassia seed.' Therefore, in annotating the Five Thousand Characters, he said: ''The Way that can be spoken of' refers to morning food being delicious; 'is not the constant Way' refers to its becoming feces by evening. 'These two issue from the same origin but differ in name' refers to the human sexual organ producing urine, and from the urine issuing semen. 'Mystery upon mystery' refers to the nose and the mouth.' Ling praised this art, and his descendants practiced it successively for three generations. Your teachings are so defiling and chaotic to the common people! If one observes the commoners practicing your teachings, then they will be unfilial and disrespectful, and the world will give birth to the offspring of jackals and wolves; lacking propriety and righteousness, their families will clearly produce offspring like owls and jing beasts. One who appraises rare treasures gathers black dragon pearls without dreading the depths of the nine whirlpools; one who seeks splendid uncarved jade pursues the Lanyan jade without fearing the perils of three tiers of mountains. They prize the jewel! Those who admire the Ultimate Way peer into its doors and windows, regarding power and profit as light as wild goose down; entering its innermost recesses, they discard glory and rank like casting off worn slippers. They revere its reality! Therefore, they can make weary men not begrudge their strength, and poor visitors not begrudge their wealth. Aspiring to invisible benefits is surely not confusion! As for the immortal arts, their absurd falsehoods have an ancient lineage. Han Zhong and Xu Shi first practiced deception in the Qin state; Wencheng and Wuli continued the fraud in the Han realm. Tales of controlling cranes never achieved the reality of ascending the clouds; claims of dining on morning mists never produced proof of assuaging hunger. Thus there arose the debates about gibbons, apes, large clams, and oysters. The commentary on Cao Zhi's *Bian Dao Lun* says: 'Immortals belong to the category of gibbons and apes; together with worldly people who attain the Way, they transform into immortals. When a pheasant enters the sea, it transforms into a clam; when a swallow enters the sea, it transforms into an oyster. While they were hovering on their wings and fluttering their feathers, they still knew themselves; but suddenly casting themselves into spiritual transformation, their bodies changed and they turned into fish and turtles. How could they still remember the joy of soaring through forest thickets and nesting on walls and roofs? Niuao fell ill and turned into a tiger, and meeting his elder brother, he devoured him. If it is like this, why prize transformation?' These are conversations about tethering the wind and catching shadows! Therefore, discarding a solid gourd is because it cannot serve as a vessel; abandoning a stony field is because it is hard to cultivate; despising the heterodox path is because it is false and hypocritical. Verifying reality brings concord with what is shared; investigating emptiness brings accumulation of what is disparate. When principle accords, the world esteems it; when intentions are deceitful, things turn away from it. This is a common matter! How can you call it confusion? To humble the Dao and venerate the Buddha is entirely fitting! Yet you do not realize it yourself—that is your fourth blindness.