辯偽錄 2.4

2.4

辯曰。夫麒麟鬪而日月虧。鯨鯢死而彗星現。銅山崩而洛鐘應。葭灰缺而月暈殘。蓋感應之道交。故機教之相扣。人心渴仰法雨芳菲。沃彼情塵開他蒙昧。故孔子曰。不憤不啟。不悱不發。此明待問而說也。況乎聖人設教權變多方。豈使他人起怒自受焚溺。全無㥏𭟓強與他言。豈知虛往實歸之道哉。剜刻字樣巧合經名。既坐火焰上說金光明經。坐蓮華上說蓮華經。則道德二篇坐於道路而說。洞玄三部元在水洞而談。此既不然。彼云何爾。且金光明性相通顯。法華經破權歸實。涅槃經明佛性真常。四十二章群經集出。不窮根蔕。盜聽妄談。唯口起羞。出何容易。難惑上智。只誑下愚。又上經既是老子所陳。道士應宜依而學佛。何乃合氣為道專。諷靈寶。試問三經文明何義。道藏既不收攝道士又不通明。偷大聖之至詮。為老君之極唱。正符涅槃盜牛之喻。又同瞽者誤入金穴。雖得其寶未知何用。又曰。懺悔三業至年月齋法。若如是者道士應通。且問懺悔是何語言。今此懺悔為事懺耶為理懺耶。約功德門而滅罪耶。約逆生死心而滅罪耶。能懺之心宜有幾種。所懺之罪何處安排。懺悔二字由尚罕知。則三業六根五逆十惡戒善之軌年月齋名決不曉達。若是老子所說。道士應合備知。既然一字不通。顯知偷佛妄談。此同竊賊人物被主認著猶不招承更生拒辯。焚經火板方乃慚惶。君子悔前不至如此。

The refutation states: When qilin fight, the sun and moon suffer eclipse; when whales die, comets appear; when the bronze mountain collapses, the bell of Luoyang resonates; when the reed ash is depleted, the moon's halo is fractured. This is because the way of sympathetic resonance intersects, and thus the capacity and the teaching correspond to each other. When human hearts thirst and yearn, the fragrant rain of the Dharma moistens their dust of passions and enlightens their ignorance. Therefore Confucius said: 'If one is not eager to learn, I do not enlighten him; if one is not struggling to speak, I do not open the way for him.' This clarifies that teaching awaits questioning before being spoken. How much more so should the teachings devised by a sage be adaptable and multiform—how could he cause another to become enraged and subject himself to being burned and submerged? Having no sense of shame whatsoever, he forces speech upon another; how could he know the principle of 'going empty and returning full'? Gouging and carving out phrases, they cleverly matched the names of the scriptures: since he supposedly sat on flames to preach the Golden Light Sūtra, and sat upon a lotus to preach the Lotus Sūtra, then the two chapters of the Daodejing must have been spoken while sitting on a road, and the three divisions of the Dongxuan must originally have been delivered in a water cavern! If this is not so, how could that be so? Moreover, the Suvarṇaprabhāsa thoroughly reveals both nature and characteristics; the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka refutes the provisional to return to the real; the Nirvāṇa Sūtra clarifies the true and eternal Buddha-nature; and the Sūtra of Forty-Two Chapters is an anthology gathered from various sūtras. Without probing their roots, they secretly eavesdrop and talk wildly; shame arises only from the mouth—how can words be uttered so lightly? This can hardly deceive those of superior wisdom; it only dupes the profoundly foolish. Furthermore, since the above sūtras were ostensibly set forth by Laozi, the Daoist priests ought to rely on them to study Buddhism; why then do they merge their breaths to cultivate the Dao and exclusively chant the Lingbao? May we ask: what meaning do the texts of these three sūtras explain? The Daoist canon neither preserves them nor do the Daoist priests understand them. Stealing the ultimate teachings of the Great Sage and making them the supreme utterance of Laozi matches exactly the Nirvāṇa Sūtra's parable of stealing milk; it is also like a blind man stumbling into a gold mine: though he obtains its treasure, he does not know how to use it. It also states that they 'repented the three karmas' down to the monthly and yearly fasting practices. If that were so, the Daoist priests should comprehend them. Let us ask: what language is 'chanhui' (repentance)? In this present repentance, is it repentance through phenomenon, or repentance through principle? Is sin eradicated through the approach of merit, or is sin eradicated through the approach of turning away from the mind of saṃsāra? How many kinds of mind capable of repenting should there be? Where are the sins being repented to be placed? When even the two characters for repentance (chanhui) are scarcely understood by them, they certainly do not comprehend the principles of the three karmas, the six sense faculties, the five heinous sins, the ten unwholesome deeds, the precepts and virtues, or the names of the monthly and yearly fasts. If these had been spoken by Laozi, Daoist priests should fully know them. Since they do not understand a single word, it is obvious that they stole from the Buddha and spoke wildly. This is just like a thief who, when caught with another's property and recognized by the owner, still refuses to confess and generates further disputes to resist; only when the woodblocks of their forged scriptures are burnt do they become ashamed and panicked. A gentleman repents earlier and does not arrive at such an outcome.