三教平心論 2.17

2.17

Furthermore, he said: "Their words are wild and vague, diffuse and extravagant, filled with strange illusions and apparitions, adroit at adducing unverifiable things without reality." Yet he failed to reflect that speaking of the vast duration of kalpas is because the Buddha's vision penetrates the past and future without limitation or obstruction; it is not like the Confucians, who rely upon written records and know merely the events of several thousand or hundred years and go no further. Speaking of the vastness of the worlds is because the Buddha's vision penetrates space and the dharma-realm without boundaries; it is not like the Confucians, who check the regional treatises for verification and know merely the events of China and the four barbarian tribes and go no further. Layman Wujin's 'Treatise on Protecting the Dharma' says: "Among human beings, there are those who are extremely intelligent and those who are extremely dull. The intelligent are able to know the traces of the rise and fall of antiquity and the treatises of the Six Classics, philosophers, and histories; whereas the dull truly do not know them. How could one take what those [intelligent ones] know to be preposterous?" Judged by this, how could the sayings of the Buddhists be called unverifiable and lacking reality?