法苑珠林 93.45

93.45

Question: Transgressions are either interdictory or natural; does the substance of wine produce transgression? Now there are people with a high tolerance for wine who can drink without becoming intoxicated, and without impairing their spirit or generating transgressions. Such a person should not incur guilt by drinking wine. In that case, being able to drink is faultless and only inability incurs blame; what has this to do with severing wine in order to accomplish the goodness of precepts? One could say that being able to drink with high tolerance should always be called keeping the precepts, and that getting drunk from drinking a little makes one a great sinner. Answer: Establishing precepts to prevent wrongdoing is fundamentally to generate good. The precepts generate good; when body and speech do not contravene, and [desires] cease in the presence of circumstances, both the interdictory and natural transgressions are severed, and only then is it called the goodness of precepts. Now a person tolerant of wine neither disorders their spirit nor breaks other precepts, so in terms of actual principle it is not a [natural] transgression. Yet precisely because drinking gives rise to guilt through externally violating the interdictory teaching and giving rise to infractions in the presence of circumstances, it is still called having transgression, for defying the non-drinking of wine is not keeping the precepts.