法苑珠林 90.4

90.4

Verily, this virtue of the precepts is rooted in vows profound and weighty; for saving living beings and benefiting creatures, it is praised as supreme. Therefore, to receive them is very easy, but to maintain them is rather difficult. If one does not meticulously contemplate and guard them, how could the great fruit possibly be attained? One fears that an error of a hair's breadth leads to a loss of a thousand li. If minor faults are concealed, they become great sins hard to extinguish; if disclosed, they are all the more pardonable. Thus we know that when there is a fault, one must confess it to enter the seven assemblies; clinging to folly without deśanā, one is discarded forever in the three destinies. Therefore, this single chapter comprehensively illuminates the benefits and detriments of maintaining and violating precepts for both monastics and layfolk. If householders in white robes once had slight faith and received the precepts, but, overcome by fame and profit, lost their mindfulness and transgressed, this is therefore also addressed here. If they are ordinary white-robed people whose karmic consciousness gallops like the wind, infatuated with wealth and sex, craving fame and profit, delighting in attachment to the five desires, and having no faith in the Buddha's Dharma, these are definitely guilty people and not what is illuminated here. What is described now concerns ordained monks, nuns, upāsakas, and the like; fearing that they will contravene the Buddha's teachings and vainly be tainted by fame and profit, this is now especially expounded. If they are superior white-robed folk, seeing the Buddha rebuke the sins of monastics, they will immediately encourage themselves, examining themselves so as not to commit them: 'The monastic life is pure and open, aspiring high to the profound tracks, yet they still lose mindfulness, transgress, and are interrogated and rebuked by the Buddha. We white-robed folk have neither shame nor remorse, openly committing offenses day and night without ceasing, never feeling disgraced or reforming. Therefore the Tathāgata abandons us without gracing us with teachings.' They then correct their faults, quiet their minds, and do not transgress. It is like a wise person who first cautions his own person; seeing others rebuked, he also reforms himself. Thus the text says: 'Seeing the worthy, think of emulating them; seeing the unworthy, examine oneself within.' If they are inferior, ordinary, foolish people lacking understanding, seeing the Buddha rebuke the saṃgha of monks who commit faults, they only add contemptuous laughter and ruin their good minds, not reflecting that their extreme folly and stupidity is worse than that of beasts. They are also like a drunkard who falls and lies in a cesspool, vomiting messily, his body soiled with excrement and urine, looking up at the people on the bank and instead rebuking them for not being upright. Such people are just like this. Therefore, even though the Tathāgata wishes to rescue them, there is no way out for them. Thus a sūtra says: 'It is like a person who falls into a cesspool, submerged entirely with not a single hair left to pull. How can one save him?'