北山錄 8.2.3

8.2.3

yet their honor and lowliness differed. (Chapping means skin cracking. There was someone who sold medicine to treat it, but his earnings were very meager. A southern traveler bought his formula, went back, and presented it to his ruler; when it was used during a winter military campaign, he received great emoluments. This comes from Zhuangzi.) Stripping the feudatories of their land was the same, yet their rise and fall differed. (The First Emperor of Qin stripped and confiscated the lands of the feudal lords without enfeoffing them; when the Han army entered Qin, no one came to their rescue, and they perished. When Li Yiji had an audience with the King of Han, he urged him to enfeoff the feudal territories; when Zhang Liang arrived, he hastily halted it, borrowing eating sticks within the tent to calculate and argue why it should not be done, and so they did not enfeoff them; Han indeed flourished.) Truly, this is because circumstantial fortune has skill and clumsiness, and endowed destiny has what can be changed and what cannot be changed. Therefore, the gentleman, knowing that circumstantial fortune and destiny cannot be altered, delights in Heaven and knows destiny; the petty man, not knowing this, exceeds his bounds and acts rashly. (Not knowing the Dao, one cannot be a gentleman.) Thus, fortune and misfortune, safety and peril, are naturally visible. Those who claim that good and bad fortune are a constant principle that depends on destiny and not on circumstantial fortune are insufficient to make judgments. (Circumstantial fortune has obstruction and prosperity, good and bad fortune, which involve human agency.) For when winter grass is covered and does not die, how is that not due to circumstantial fortune? (Through circumstance and application, one may escape.) Those who claim that an endowed nature's capacity leads to destiny's fulfillment entirely through circumstantial fortune and not destiny are also insufficient to make judgments. (One who simply relies on circumstance and application without believing in past karma is also mistaken.) For when a cold tree is irrigated but does not flourish (To flourish is to be moist and watered. For example, if you water an ancient cypress, how could it suddenly grow luxuriant? It is because its constitution is firm), how is that not due to destiny? Only when both beliefs are complete may one be called a person who has attained the profound. Therefore, believing that there is circumstantial fortune is believing in karma; believing that there is destiny is believing in retribution. (Circumstantial fortune is karmic causes; destiny is karmic effects.) Believing in circumstantial fortune and destiny without believing in karmic cause and retribution—how is that different from being angry upon hearing "three in the morning and four in the evening," yet delighted upon hearing "four in the morning and three in the evening"? (Zhuangzi says: When it was said to give "three in the morning and four in the evening," all the monkeys were angry; but when it was said to give "four in the morning and three in the evening," the monkeys were all delighted, not realizing that the names were different while the reality was the same.) Thus, although the ancient sage Ruists of this land did not openly speak of karmic retribution, they secretly determined it by means of circumstantial fortune and destiny. (Determined means fixed. This is because they covertly fixed the principle of karma through circumstantial fortune and destiny.) The names are different, but the meaning is one and the same. The Changes says: "To know the incipient triggers—is that not divine?" Master Zhuang says: "The ten thousand things emerge from incipient triggers." The Yin Fu Jing says: "The mind is born from incipient triggers and dies from incipient triggers." (The original has: seeing things, incipient triggers arise. The mind can initiate incipient triggers, and the eyes can see incipient triggers. The mind of birth and death resides in things; the incipient triggers of success and failure are seen by the eyes. Zhang Zhan says: "The incipient trigger is the beginning of all beings and the highest point of movement.") An incipient trigger is the subtlety of movement; this indeed refers to karmic fortune. Someone may ask: Since karma arises from movement, its principle of retribution is uniform—how then can there be light and heavy, fixed and unfixed? (The karma generated is the same; how can there be lightness, heaviness, and unfixed receipt of retribution?) I reply: The mind has joy and anger; actions have kindness and cruelty. (The minds that generate actions differ.) Hence, bodily form cannot bear distress on the face, yet in the mind one indulges in the punishment of burning pillars. (King Zhou's lack of Dao: he altered the punishment of burning pillars and practiced the cruelty of disemboweling and hacking people to pieces. This is heavy karma.) Moreover, the Book of Documents says: "Pardon offenses, no matter how great; punish deliberate crimes, no matter how small." (Pardon means release. It means not refusing to pardon simply because an offense is great, and not failing to execute simply because a fault is small.) A sūtra says: "If shaped into an iron ball, even a small piece will sink in water; if shaped into an iron bowl, even a large piece will float." Are they not all due to this? (Even if karma is heavy, through fierce repentance one may escape; even if karma is light, if one does not repent, one must suffer it.) Furthermore, if we combine and separate the three karmas and the three periods of time to make eight (A single one of body, speech, or mind is called separate; the three karmas occurring together is called combined. The two modes of separate and combined encompass the three karmas and the three periods of time to make eight; the three periods are the three lifetimes), then when combined they are heavy, and when disparate they are light. (When the three karmas arise together, it is called heavy; when they do not arise together, it is called light.) When light, it is unfixed; only when heavy is it fixed. For this reason, Bimbisāra starved because of a rebellious son (Bimbisāra is King Bimbisāra); the Śākya clan died at the hands of a ferocious king (King Virūḍhaka); Yao possessed clarity and wisdom yet encountered the deluge (The great flood swelled and rose to mount the hills and overtop the mounds, and the common people were submerged); Tang had benevolent virtue yet met a severe drought (Tang held the world through benevolent virtue, yet there was a great drought for seven years, and he prayed at the Mulberry Forest); Zhang Yi and Shan Bao sought life through regimen, yet neither could live (Zhang Yi of Qi was a timid and cautious man. Whenever he saw a high gate hung with curtains, he never failed to run. At age forty, he died of an internal febrile illness. This was an excess of agitation clinging to the external. Shan Bao was a man of Lu who lived in a cave, drank spring water, and did not share in material profits with the people. At age seventy, he still had the complexion of an infant, but unfortunately met a hungry tiger that ate him. This was clinging to the internal. Shan Bao nourished his internal, but a tiger ate his external; Zhang Yi nourished his external, but illness attacked his internal. Both sought life, but neither could live); and Vakkula and Houji of Zhou did not seek life through regimen, yet both preserved their lives. This is because their circumstantial fortune and destiny were fixed. (Vakkula means "Good Appearance" in Chinese. Having once offered a single harītakī fruit, for ninety-one kalpas he never suffered from a headache. His stepmother devised means to kill him, but he survived five perils without dying. After leaving home, his eyes did not gaze at women, his body did not enter a nunnery, and he never spoke a single sentence of Dharma for a woman. King Aśoka, knowing of his few desires, offered a gold coin at his stūpa, but it sprang out of the earth and would not accept it. Houji of Zhou was the son of Emperor Di Ku, borne by Jiang Yuan. When born, he was covered in hair, and so he was abandoned in deep mountains, on cold ice, and in a narrow lane. Thrice abandoned and not dying, he was named Qi, meaning "The Abandoned." He was skilled in sowing seeds and served Yao; by his fifteenth-generation descendant King Wen, they won the empire.) The black wind blew, yet they obtained salvation (There was a merchant who entered the sea; when a black wind blew him into the land of the rākṣasas, they all recollected the Buddha and all obtained escape); the proper phulla was worn, and it long declined (There was a monk who, seeing the majestic power of a wheel-turning king, loved it and day and night strove diligently to seek it. The Buddha, fearing he would not attain liberation and wishing to diminish his merit of a thousand wheels, had him wear a single proper phulla; a phulla is a leather boot, and the wheel-turning king's karma was thereby diminished); the mulberry and paper mulberry did not spell calamity for the Yin ancestor (Taiwu of Yin made Yi Zhi, the son of Yi Yin, his minister. A mulberry and paper mulberry grew together in the court, and in a single morning they grew to a span; in fear, he cultivated virtue. The mulberry and paper mulberry died, and three years later, sixteen states arrived with multiple interpreters, so he was named Middle Ancestor); and Mars retreated, averting the disaster of the Song capital. (Mars appeared in the asterism assigned to Song.)