北山錄 3.2.9

3.2.9

"Square is like the city of vaipulya; / round is like the sun of wisdom; / motion is compared to the waves of consciousness; / stillness resembles the chamber of nirvāṇa." Xue was astonished. Later he composed a fifteen-fascicle commentary on the Nirvāṇa Sūtra; praying before the relic pagoda, it radiated light, illuminating the night). The Emperor once wished to test the capacity of the śramaṇas, and broadly summoned them to the palace courtyard. He commanded the armored palace guards to advance with drawn swords to chase them; only Jingtuo walked with measured steps, as if at leisure, winding his way back. The Emperor admired his breadth and profundity, ordering him to ascend the hall and granting him Dharma implements and monastic robes to mark his exceptional nature (the eminent monk Jingtuo always carried his mother while pursuing his studies, and was skilled in large calligraphy, his brush resembling an arm and its shaft three feet long; he would write a single character one zhang square without making any revisions; Emperor Wen of the Sui summoned him to the palace hall and bestowed on him a large bamboo fan three feet across, telling him to hold and use it, along with tall clogs of pine and medlar, telling him to wear them as he left the palace; the Emperor escorted him personally, saying, "Truly a giant among monks!"). Looking at the Renshou and Kaihuang eras, all under heaven was in great order, which was also the result of the utmost goodness. Yet his wisdom did not plan for the distant future, and his family affection was not good (zang means good; "family affection" refers to Emperor Yang inheriting his father's great enterprise without cultivating fine virtue, becoming dissolute and bewitched by female beauty until it led to destruction), ultimately causing the divination of the dynastic generations not to endure. Therefore, our teaching takes merit and wisdom as a dual succour; when one is lacking, what can be said? (The three Sui emperors lasted a total of thirty-eight years, and then abdicated to the Tang.) In antiquity, those with virtue were given rank, and those with merit were given emolument; yet among śramaṇas there have been those who attained the ranks and emoluments of ministers and grand masters. In antiquity, one was given a name at birth, capped with a style name, and given a posthumous name at death; yet among śramaṇas there have been those who attained the posthumous names of marquises and earls (a son is capped at age twenty and given a style name; the style name expresses virtue; after death, a posthumous name is established; the people of Zhou served the spirits with taboo names, so when a name was finally to be tabooed, it was replaced with a posthumous name; in ancient times there was no bestowal of purple robes or master titles, but there were bestowals of posthumous titles, as when Dinglan was bestowed the posthumous name Juexing). How lamentable that the people of Qin banished [Guṇa]bhadra to Mount Lu! (Bhadra is rendered here as Juexian; his daily recitation and practice equaled another person's month; coming to Qin from Central India, his discussions with Kumārajīva were extraordinarily wondrous; slandered by Sengzhao and others, he was driven away to Mount Lu, where he translated more than one hundred fascicles of sūtras and died at seventy-one.) And that the sovereign of the Wei executed Xuan'gao in Pingcheng! (Gao was extraordinary from birth; Tuoba Tao of the Later Wei usurped Pingcheng; Gao was on good terms with Crown Prince Huang; Huang was slandered and his father suspected Gao; moreover, Cui Hao, Kou Qianzhi, and others slandered him to the Emperor; the Emperor in rage bound and killed him; a bright light reached the monastery, and only then did his disciples know; they requested his corpse to bury it, whereupon Gao rose again, spoke fully of good and bad fortune, and died; this appears in the Liang Biographies). If it is not the right time, even sages and worthies will still incur the cruelty of imperiling their persons—how could it stop at merely weeping for the qilin and grieving for the phoenix? Thus Emperor Wen of the Han treated the worthy with generosity, yet Jia Yi was still banished (Emperor Wen of the Han was benevolent and sagely, and Jia Yi was a worthy talent, yet he was still banished to Changsha and died); Emperor Wu of the Wei treated men of service with courtesy, yet Kong Rong was executed (Kong Rong, style name Wenju, was executed by Emperor Wu of the Wei; Rong's two sons, eight and nine years old, were playing chess and did not rise; attendants said, "Your father is about to be executed, why do you not rise?"; the two sons said, "Under an overturned nest, can there be any unbroken eggs?"; soon both were arrested and died). How can this not be that the destiny of obstruction or success hinges on the fortune of the times? I once went out to the untamed wilderness (the untamed wilderness refers to the outskirts), where I met a fresh breeze sending forth fragrance; looking about in all four directions, I found several stems of purple lingzhi mushrooms at the edge of withered thickets, but where the wildfire had reached, their stems and caps were broken and marred. I then picked and appreciated them (xie has the fanqie hu jie). But considering that they were ill-suited for any use, as dusk fell I placed them upon a rock and returned home. On another day, I ascended to a vermilion gate, and beheld, within a jade cage, [mushrooms] draped with patterned embroidery; how did they differ from what I had seen before? It was merely a matter of meeting or not meeting [their proper time]. Alas, how can it be that among people, dealing with people is not just like this?