法苑珠林 32.28

32.28

Now, the way of compassionate salvation has awed antiquity and commanded reverent gaze; the methods of penetrating transformation have from the beginning been difficult to fathom. This belongs to the great sages beyond the realm, not to the ordinary abilities within it. Exhausting it, one cannot reach its origin; probing it, one cannot reach its end. Yet, though ordinary beings and sages differ, transformation has commonalities. This truly arises because wisdom has shallows and depths, and hindrances have coarseness and subtlety; capacity has greatness and smallness, and transformation has breadth and narrowness. Surely only those who have penetrated the root of life and death can speak of transformation. If one relies upon the Buddhist teachings, one clearly believes in causes and fruits: only when causes and conditions rely upon one another are transformations achieved. If one relies upon worldly customs, they have not reached the great expanse; they believe only in condition-arising and do not depend on causal accomplishment. Therefore, the Record of Qian Bao says: 'Heaven has five qi, and the myriad things are transformed and brought to completion. The essence of wood is benevolence; the essence of fire is propriety; the essence of metal is righteousness; the essence of water is wisdom; the essence of earth is kindness. When the five qi are entirely pure, sagely virtue is complete. When wood is turbid, there is weakness; when fire is turbid, there is licentiousness; when metal is turbid, there is violence; when water is turbid, there is greed; when earth is turbid, there is obduracy. When the five qi are entirely turbid, it produces the lowest among the common people. The central lands have many sages, for harmonious qi intersect there; the remote regions have many strange creatures, for extraordinary qi produce them. If something is endowed with this qi, it must have this form; if it has this form, it must generate this nature. Therefore, those who eat grain are wise and cultivated; those who eat grass are strong and foolish; those who eat mulberry leaves produce silk and become moths; those who eat meat are brave, fierce, and intractable; those who eat earth have no mind and do not cease; those who eat qi are spiritually clear and long-lived; those who do not eat do not die and are divine. The large-waisted [wasp] has no male; the slender-waisted [wasp] has no female. Where there is no male, they copulate externally; where there is no female, they nurture externally. Insects that undergo three transformations first become pregnant and then mate; beasts that practice mutual love serve as their own male and female. The mistletoe depends on tall trees; the dodder relies on fuling. Trees root in the earth; duckweed plants itself in water. Birds part the void to fly; beasts tread on the solid to run. Insects seal themselves in the earth to hibernate; fish submerge in the deep to dwell. Those rooted in heaven incline toward the above; those rooted in earth incline toward the below; those rooted in time incline toward the horizontal—each follows its kind. A thousand-year-old pheasant enters the sea and becomes a mirage-clam; a hundred-year-old sparrow enters the river and becomes a clam. A thousand-year-old tortoise or soft-shelled turtle can speak with humans; a thousand-year-old fox rises and becomes a beautiful woman. A thousand-year-old snake, severed, can rejoin; a hundred-year-old rat can divine fortune. This is the culmination of cosmic numbers. On the spring equinox, the hawk transforms into a dove; on the autumn equinox, the dove transforms into a hawk. This is the transformation of the seasons. Therefore, decaying grass becomes fireflies; rotting reeds become crickets; rice-plants become locusts; wheat becomes butterflies. Wings sprout upon them, eyes form upon them, and mind-and-wisdom reside within them. This is transforming from the non-sentient to the sentient, and the qi is altered. The crane becomes a river-deer; the snake becomes a soft-shelled turtle; the cricket becomes a shrimp. Without losing their blood and qi, their form and nature change. Kinds such as these cannot be fully discussed. Moving in response to change is called according with the ordinary. But if they mistake their proper orientation, it becomes an omen of disaster. Therefore, when the lower body is born from the reversal of the upper qi, humans giving birth to beasts or beasts giving birth to humans are due to the confusion of qi. Men transforming into women or women transforming into men are due to the crystallization of qi. Niu Ai of Lu fell ill, and in seven days he transformed into a tiger. His physical form changed, and his claws and teeth were bared. When his elder brother was about to enter, he pounced upon him and ate him. When he was a man, he did not know he was about to become a tiger; when he was a tiger, he did not know he had once been a man. During the Taikang era of the Jin dynasty, Ruan Shi of Chenliu was bitten and injured by a pit viper. Unable to bear the pain, he repeatedly smelled his wound. Soon after, a pair of pit vipers formed inside his nose. In the Yuankang era, Ji Yuanzai of Liyang, as a guest, ate a cooked turtle. Afterward, an abdominal mass formed. A physician attacked it with medicine, and he discharged several sheng of young turtles, the size of small coins, with heads, feet, and shells complete, and patterns on their carapaces fully formed; only, having been struck by the medicine, they were already dead. Now, smelling is not the qi of transformation and nurture; the nose is not a place for gestation and pregnancy; and eating a delicacy is not an instrument for producing things. Looking at it from this: the life and death of the myriad things, as well as their transformations, unless one has thoughts that penetrate the divine, even if one seeks within oneself, how could one know whence they arise? Yet, that decaying grass becomes fireflies is due to rot; that wheat becomes butterflies is due to moisture. Thus, the transformations of the myriad things all have their causes. A farmer who would halt the transformation of wheat soaks it in ash; a sage who orders the transformations of the myriad things delivers them with the Dao. Could it be otherwise? What we perceive of events at present is certainly not yet sufficient to exhaust the utmost reaches of their transformations. These are perfumed and formed by the fundamental consciousness and miscellaneous karmas of sentient beings. When the causal seeds have ripened, the conditions borrow external forms, and both sentient and insentient things give rise to transformations according to conditions. If there were no prior seed, even if one encountered conditions, the conditions being distant and their power weak, they could not transform alone. Therefore, because the cause borrows conditions, the seed does not mature alone; because conditions borrow the cause, conditions do not manage it alone. When causes and conditions combine, their power and function match equally; the myriad kinds arise therefrom, and a single factor cannot establish anything. May future wise men not doubt these reflections of mine!