辯偽錄 1.7

1.7

I have heard that when the Dharma King governs the world, he propagates the correct Path to deliver the age; when an enlightened ruler ascends the throne, he elucidates the sovereign ultimate to rescue living beings. They excise falsehood, support the right, exalt virtue, and distinguish delusions. Thus, Yao executed the four evils and the eight directions enjoyed peace; the Buddha subdued the six teachers' assemblies and the five regions of India submitted in their hearts. All of these were means to rectify chaos, rescue from combustion, and open the ears and eyes [of the world]. Now, our Buddha perfected merit in past kalpas and sent down his spirit for the sake of living beings. Manifesting birth where there is no birth, he beneficially appeared in the lands of the trichiliocosm; displaying forms where forms are transcended, he suddenly transformed hundreds of millions of regions. He is like the bright moon floating in the empty sky, to which a thousand rivers universally respond; like the sweeping wind exhaling its breath, through which the myriad hollows sound. He enticed foolish children onto the vehicle of the single ultimate; he guided those on lost paths onto the road of the Eightfold Noble Path. He pulled out the torments of the five turbidities; he dismantled the cage of the four inverted views. He pointed out the bright jewel beneath the garment; he split open the volume of scripture inside the speck of dust. Subduing the demon armies beneath the tree of enlightenment, he did not descend from his palace hall; crushing non-Buddhists at the Golden River, his repelling of adversaries was boundless. His grace flowed through the myriad nations; his benevolence extended to the four kinds of born beings. Compassionate clouds shaded the heaven of the Peak of Existence; the Dharma rain moistened realms without end. When living beings lost receptivity, the Great Sage returned to Truth; sages and philosophers succeeded him in brilliance to maintain the dark paradigm. Thus Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna expanded the net of teaching in the western heavens; Āryadeva and Gunamati erected the Dharma banner in South India. Vasubandhu possessed the virtue of whipping the corpse; Dignāga displayed the marvel of roaring at the rock. They crushed non-Buddhists at that time and broadcast their fine renown for myriad ages. Coming down to the golden visage appearing in the dream from the east and the jade horse arriving from the west, Kāśyapa Mātanga manifested the right at Luoyang, and Daoist scriptures were all consumed by fire; Sengrong refuted falsehood within the Pass, and the brahmacārins knotted their tongues in speechlessness. They suspended the Buddha-sun on the dark crossroads; they fanned the wind of compassion across the universe. Worthies and talents followed in one another's steps, outstanding men linked their fragrances. Thus Great Controller [Fashang], master of many talents, refuted Jiang Bin at the palace of the Wei; Falin, erudite in extensive knowledge, repelled Fu Yi under the Tang dynasty. They raised exalted virtue in their own time and made their fine renown resound in later generations. Yet, as the sage grows ever more distant, demonic falsehood closely resembles the truth. Purple indeed confuses red; counterfeit stone constantly blends with jade. Unless one possesses supreme wisdom, who could investigate and clarify it? Therefore, when an uncarved rat was fraudulently called jade, the people of Zhou treated the precious and the base as one; when the fowl and the phoenix had different forms, the customs of Chu mistook the right and the wrong. Thus, there are those of narrow learning who rejected [the Dharma] with heretical claims, and through artful words and deviant paths cited it to make it identical with their own doctrines. Although the supreme Way suffers not the slightest loss, false theories contaminate the ears and eyes [of the multitude]. This is why the obscure paths are easily fallen into, and why the gate of the sages is difficult to traverse. When our Yuan came to possess all under heaven, its felicity accorded with the golden wheel and its auspicious omens matched the jade calendar. Covering the six directions, it gloriously established its realm; commanding myriad nations, it defined their borders. To the east, it reached the bounds of the Coiled Peaches; to the west, it exhausted the [garrison of] Xiliu; to the south, it shifted the golden cauldrons; to the north, it reached the Jade Balance. Since Zunlu and Hexu, and after the Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang, there has never been an era as flourishing as the present dynasty. Taizu and Taizong promulgated luminous edicts to preserve and protect [the Dharma]; the Yuan Emperor and the Ming Emperor renounced golden treasures to cultivate and venerate it. All bore in mind the intention of entrustment; together they revered the instructions of compassion. They exempted taxes and corvée, and unfolded its transforming influence. The reigning emperor possesses deep benevolence and sagacious wisdom, embodying the Way with broad enlightenment. He bears the heroic foundation of the four sages and carries on the grand achievements of the hundred kings. In his leisure from myriad state affairs, he casts his regard upon the Buddhist gate: he recites golden texts of hundreds of thousands of canons, and hosts magnificent assemblies of tens of thousands of monks. Planting blessings in the garden of enlightenment, he constructs monasteries. His governance values clemency and benevolence, his benevolence extends to the common folk. He seeks out and promotes those from humble backgrounds, and distinguishes the worthy from the foolish. He understands the shallowness and depth of Buddhism and Daoism, and penetrates the excellence and inferiority of the heterodox and the orthodox. Yet the Daoists, lacking discernment, held the state in contempt; presuming upon their residence in the northern realm, they gave free rein to disputations born of their private notions. Qiu Chuji spoke recklessly to flatter the ruler; Li Zhichang feigned embellishments to curry favor with the times. They gathered delinquent criminals fleeing corvée, and compiled spurious texts slandering Buddhism. Linghu Zhang first composed the reckless discourses, and Shi Zhijing further broadened the heterodox writings. Imitating the Tathāgata's eighty-two niches, they compiled Laozi's eighty-one transformations. Indiscriminate regarding past and present, ignorant of scriptures and histories, they purloined Buddhist scriptures and incorporated them into the Daoist teachings. They took Buddhist auspicious portents to make them Laozi's portents; changing family and personal names, they altered Śākya's auspicious omens into Laozi's auspicious omens. Presuming upon these as their own virtues, they bred falsehood from falsehood and piled vanity upon vanity. They proclaimed that Li Dan emerged before the Great Void, and forced Śākyamuni to descend in the era of King Zhuang of Zhou. Establishing biographies and illustrations, they printed blocks for circulation, making Yin Xi become a Buddha and honoring Lao Dan as the ancestor of Śākyamuni. [They claimed] Fuxi received instructions from him, elevating Boyang as the teacher of Fuxi and Shennong; when the Xuan Emperor asked about the Way from Guangcheng, they identified [Guangcheng] as Laozi; when King Wen received transmission from Lü Wang, they twisted [Lü Wang] into Lord Lao; the Duke of Zhou bent his knees before his couch (Laozi instructing him with the Xuanji jing), and Confucius bowed his head below his seat (asking about propriety). Obliterating the three teachings to make their own alone manifest, surpassing the thousand sages to occupy the position of supreme honor, towering solitary before the Five Phases of Cosmic Change, and acting as master for a hundred generations thereafter—within this realm, as the sole sage, who else could there be? Artfully embellished with a hundred tricks, there was not a grain of truth. Examining these illustrations, their intention was to eliminate the hundred schools and solely dominate as a single school, obscuring the sage accomplishments of Fuxi and the Yellow Emperor and destroying the grand models of the Buddha and Confucius. This great atrocity and supreme wickedness was unknown to the people of the world; even Youqiong's disruption of the Xia government or Wang Mang's deception of the Han court could not surpass it. If our master were not brilliantly sagacious, reflecting with clear illumination without confusion, who could examine and distinguish the true from the false, and discern right from wrong with their own eyes? Thereupon, he specially issued an imperial edict to sort out and determine the empty from the real; the noxious plantings of ten thousand years were uprooted in a single moment. There was the Preceptor of the Doctrine, the Shaolin Abbot: foundation stone of the ancestral court, ridgepole and pillar of the Buddhist monasteries. His mind is upright and impartial; his nature is deep, clear, and vastly erudite. Pitying their foolish blindness, he swept away their deluded barriers; clearing the baleful vapors from the vast sky, he hoisted the Buddha-sun high and bright. Having overheard this debate, I, Xiangmai, felt it inappropriate to spare words. Praising the divine brilliance of the holy ruler and admiring the refined replies of the Shaolin [Abbot], I rely provisionally upon the orthodox scriptures to refute and shatter their frantic talk, plugging the source of their reckless doctrines and toppling the forests and swamps of their mountain of heresy. I shall make the Jade Emperor of the Great Net be shocked in his soul in the midst of the Nine Heavens; cause the Heavenly Worthy of Primordial Beginning to lose heart atop the Three Purities; make the Teaching Masters of the Myriad Heavens find their shame hard to endure; and leave the Grotto Immortals of the Nine Bureaus abashed with nowhere to hide. For the present, I lay out several articles, giving one example to imply the rest, so that gold and brass show their distinct colors and the Jing and Wei rivers take their separate streams. May the jade liquid drench their intestines, washing away and dispersing the deluded phlegm; may the golden probe scrape away the film, rendering the eye of wisdom clear and distinct. Let this serve as the night-shining pearl in a dark room, and as the morning mirror along obscure crossroads. Broad-minded and discerning scholars will understand this Way. In the second year of Zhiyuan, the year Zhanmeng, the dragon gathering at the Xingji station, the month of the return of the yang [eleventh month], completed at the Wanshou Hermitage.