辯正論 6.107

6.107

外論曰。夫國以民為本。本固則邦寧。是以賜及育子之門。恩流孕婦之室。故子孫享祀世載不虧。雖至孝毀躬不令絕祀。故得國家富強天下昌盛。未聞人民凋盡家國可存。今佛教即不妻不娶。名為奉法。唯事早逝號得涅槃。既闕長生之方。又無不死之術。期則一世之中。家國空矣。俗人雖欲求福。不知形命已殘。競慕家安。豈覺宗禋久滅。可謂畏死而服句吻。懼溺而赴長河。且天皇地皇之先世。無佛而祚延。後趙後魏已來。有僧而促運。正由真偽混雜禮樂不調。世不能知。其迷五也。

The external treatise says: The people are the root of a state; when the root is firm, the state is tranquil. Therefore, favors extend to households rearing children, and grace flows to rooms of pregnant women. Thus descendants offer sacrifices without deficiency from generation to generation; even when extreme filial piety impairs one's body, it never lets the ancestral offerings be cut off. Hence the country attains wealth and power, and the realm flourishes. One has never heard that when the people are entirely withered away, the family and state can endure. Now, according to the Buddhist teaching, one does not take a wife or marry, and this is called upholding the Dharma; they focus only on early demise, calling it attaining nirvāṇa. Lacking the methods for long life and having no arts of immortality, within a single generation the family and state will become empty. Although worldly people desire to seek blessings, they do not realize that their physical life is already harmed; vying to desire the peace of their homes, how can they perceive that ancestral sacrifices have long been extinguished? This can be called swallowing poison hemlock out of fear of death, or leaping into a long river out of dread of drowning. Furthermore, in the ancient eras of the Heavenly Thearch and Earthly Thearch, there was no Buddha, yet their reigns were prolonged; from the Later Zhao and Later Wei onward, there were monks, yet their dynastic fortunes were shortened. This is precisely because truth and falsity were mixed, and rites and music were not regulated. The world cannot know this—that is its fifth confusion.