辯偽錄 2.4

2.4

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.