釋氏要覽 3.214

3.214

The Shuowen says: 'It means screening.' The Shiming states: 'Ce means mixed; diverse things are mixed upon it.' Others call it hun, meaning turbid. Others call it qing, qing meaning clean; because it is an extremely filthy place, it ought to be kept clean. Nowadays, Śākya monks in the South call it the "Eastern Office" (dongsi), but its textual basis has not yet been seen. To go to the latrine can be expressed in literary terms as ru (in the Zuo zhuan: 'The Lord of Jin ate wheat, became bloated, ru ce [went to the privy], and fell in'). The Sūtra of Three Thousand Dignified Manners states: 'There are twenty-five rules for going to the latrine: first, when intending to go to the latrine, proceed directly and do not bow to people on the road; second, do not receive bows from others; third, look straight at the ground; fourth, snap the fingers three times outside the door (fearing someone is inside); fifth, if someone is already inside, do not press close; sixth, once entered, snap the fingers directly (this warns the dung-eating spirits); and so on down to seventeenth, do not use the wiping-spatula to scratch the ground (cao refers to the spatula; people of Zhejiang call it latrine grass); eighteenth, do not hold the spatula to scratch characters on the wall (from nineteen downward are the methods for washing clean).' It also says: 'If one sees that the spatulas and earth are exhausted, one should inform the person in charge; if one fetches and replenishes them with one's own hands, that is even better.' The Ākāśagarbha-sūtra states: 'If a person confessing offenses tends the latrine for eight hundred days, they will be able to eradicate sins and faults.'