法苑珠林 35.39

35.39

"Furthermore, from the time Śākyamuni Buddha first attained awakening until his nirvāṇa, he wore only the coarse-cloth saṃghārāṭī and three white cotton robes; he never wore garments of silkworms or woven silks. Why do evil monks and the like slander and defile me, saying that permission to wear them was granted in the teachings of the Vinaya? When I first attained awakening, the bhikṣuṇī Mahāprajāpatī held a gold-threaded kāṣāya in her hands and brought it to offer to me; I did not dare to accept it and told her to offer it to the saṃgha. How much less would I, the great teacher of the tridhātu, wear garments of silkworms! Although in the teachings of the Tripiṭaka I permitted the use of silks to make offerings to the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṃgha, originally it was not silk fiber coming out of the mouths of silkworms. In this continent of Jambudvīpa, as well as beyond the great continent, there are one thousand eight hundred great kingdoms, and they all have woven silks and silk fibers that all come out from women's mouths; they do not come out from the mouths of silkworms. Because they do not kill the lives of sentient beings, and through the sympathetic resonance of meritorious karma, [the silk] comes out from women's mouths. If asked how this is known, the answer is: when there is a need for silk to make robes, they must light incense and go beneath a mulberry tree. Thereupon, two magically transformed girls appear from beneath that tree, shaped like eight-year-old girls, who spit out silk from their mouths. The people of those kingdoms merely set up reeling frames, take the silk from the girls' mouths, and transfer it onto the reeling frames; once they have taken enough, they stop, and the transformed girls immediately disappear. That I permitted the wearing of silks refers to the silk of these girls and celestial silks; originally, it was never taking silk by harming living beings and using it. How can they slander me, claiming that I harmed living beings to take silk and use it?"