法苑珠林 98.5

98.5

I humbly consider: As the True Dharma and Semblance Dharma shift and change, the teachings flow into the final age. Among people there are the crooked and the upright, and within the Dharma there are corruptions and declines. Some rely on the true to concoct the false, while others adorn the empty to confuse the real. The words of forged writings are shallow and chaotic, yet jade and stone, vermilion and purple, have nowhere to hide their forms. Furthermore, because the world has gradually become frivolous and unstable, human minds have changed: delusional thoughts reside in their breasts, and they exclusively venerate karmic disasters, increasing the three poisons and further beckoning the four evils. Therefore, in the great night of ignorance, they have no intention at all of longing for the dawn; delighting in and admiring the six dusts, they do not realize the five knives follow close behind. Once fame and profit have encroached, notions of self and other flourish all the more, causing factions of villains to lightly raise perverse trends, while the pure and upright at times suffer slander and flattery. Hence, since the teaching flowed into the land of Cīnasthāna for over six hundred years, under the oppressive rule of wicked kings, it has suffered destruction and elimination three times. Disasters followed immediately upon their heels, fulfilling the observations of earlier worthy ones; with retribution already executed upon their offenses, they became the laughingstock of the empire. Alas, future karmic retribution is deeply lamentable indeed! Truly, because of being bound by meager learning, they followed their own minds with arbitrary judgement: as the Dharma consequently went into hiding, calamities and disasters converged upon their persons. If one were originally to unroll the charts of the eight treasuries and synthesize the clear perfection of literal meaning, and trace the nine consciousnesses to master the confusion and awakening of emotions and wisdom, then the five cataracts would have a time for clearing away obscurity, and the three clarities would have a day of surpassing luminescence.