Turning the heart — setting the mind on the Buddha歸心

The affairs of the three ages can be trusted and have their proofs, and generation upon generation of this house has turned its heart to them. Do not make light of them. The fine meanings within are all set out in the sutras and the treatises, and I will not add my small word of praise here. I only fear that you are not yet firm, and so I roughly urge you once more.

Consider it. The four dusts (四塵) and the five aggregates (五蔭) break form and being open and look into them; the six boats (六舟) and the three carts (三駕) carry all living beings across. The ten thousand practices return to emptiness (空) and the thousand gates enter into the good (善). Does eloquence and wisdom like this stop at the breadth of the seven classics and the hundred schools? Plainly it is beyond what Yao and Shun and the Duke of Zhou and Confucius reached. The two teachings, the inner and the outer, were one body at the root. Little by little they gathered difference, and they are not of one depth. At the first gate of the inner books five prohibitions are set, and humaneness, right, ritual, wisdom and good faith in the outer books all answer to them. Humaneness is the prohibition against killing. Right is the prohibition against stealing. Ritual is the prohibition against what is lewd. Wisdom is the prohibition against drink. Good faith is the prohibition against false words. As for hunting and war, feasting and punishment, these follow the nature of the people and cannot be swept away at a stroke, so a measure is set for them so that they do not run to excess. To turn to the Duke of Zhou and Confucius and turn one's back on the school of Sakyamuni — how lost a thing that is.

The slanders of the world are broadly five. The first calls it wild and absurd that there are matters outside the world and divine changes without limit. The second calls it deceit that fortune and misfortune, blessing and calamity, sometimes fail to answer. The third calls it wickedness that the conduct of monks and nuns is often not pure. The fourth calls it harm to the state that gold and treasure are squandered and the tax and labor rolls drained. The fifth says that even granting there are causes and conditions, and that good and evil are answered, how can the man of today toil to profit some other man of a later age? They call it a different person. I will answer them all below.

Answer one. How can a thing far off and vast be measured? Of all that men know today, nothing is greater than heaven and earth. Heaven is gathered breath, earth is gathered clod, the sun is the essence of yang, the moon the essence of yin, the stars the essence of all things. This is what the Confucians rest in. But a star falls and becomes a stone. If the essence is stone it cannot have light, and its substance is heavy besides, so what does it hang from? One star at its largest is a hundred li across, and the head and the tail of a single lodging lie tens of thousands of li apart. A thing of a hundred li strung across tens of thousands, and its breadth and its slant never grow or shrink. And stars and sun and moon are the same in shape and color and differ in grade only by size. Then are the sun and the moon stones as well? Stone is hard and close packed, so how do the crow and the hare find room inside them? And if a stone sits within the breath, how could it turn alone? If sun and moon and stars are all breath, then the body of breath is light and floating and must join with heaven and come and go and circle round without going wrong, and their slowness and quickness should by reason be all of one measure. Why then do the sun and the moon and the five planets and the twenty-eight lodgings each have their own degrees and move unevenly? Is breath, when it falls, turned suddenly into stone? Earth is dregs and turbid, and by rule it should sink and lie thick, yet dig the soil and a spring comes out, so it floats upon water. And beneath the gathered water, what is there again? Where do the rivers and the streams and the hundred valleys come from? They flow east and reach the sea; why does it not overflow? It drains away through Guitang (歸塘) and Weilü (尾閭) — where does it go? By what breath does the stone of Wojiao (沃焦) burn? Who measures out the going and the returning of the tides? The River of Heaven hangs there; why does it not scatter and fall? Water by its nature goes downward; why does it climb? When heaven and earth first opened, the lodgings were there already. The nine provinces were not yet drawn and the states not yet divided; by what, then, were the cutting of borders and the parting of the fields matched to the lodgings? Since the setting up of the fiefs, who has divided and fixed them? States grow and shrink, but the stars neither advance nor retreat, and yet calamity and omen, blessing and misfortune, do not go wrong within it. The image of heaven is great and the ranked stars are many. Why then are the allotted fields (分野) tied to the Middle Kingdom alone? The Mao lodging is the Maotou (旄頭), the place of the Xiongnu. Are the Western Hu and the Eastern Yue, Diaoti and Jiaozhi, thrown away alone? Search it out this way and no one ever comes to the end of it. How then can a man take the common run of human affairs and hold it certain that there is nothing outside the universe?

What ordinary men trust is the ear and the eye alone, and beyond ear and eye they doubt everything. The Confucians speaking of heaven have several doctrines of their own: now that heaven wraps around, now that it covers like a lid, now that it is boundless space, now that it stands at rest. The circling of the Dipper and the pole, and what the axis and its cord (管維) are fastened to — if these were seen with their own eyes they could not differ so; and if they were reckoned by measurement, how are they enough to rest on? Why then trust the guesses of ordinary men and lose the way among the fine meanings of the great sage, and wish to hold it certain that there are no worlds numberless as the sands of the Ganges and no kalpas numberless as motes of dust? Even Zou Yan had his talk of nine provinces. The man in the mountains does not believe there are fish as big as trees; the man by the sea does not believe there are trees as big as fish. Emperor Wu of Han did not believe in the bowstring glue (弦膠), and Emperor Wen of Wei did not believe in the fire cloth (火布). The Hu, seeing brocade, did not believe that a worm eats a tree and spits out thread to make it. Long ago in Jiangnan I did not believe there were felt tents that hold a thousand men, and after I came to Hebei I did not believe there were ships of twenty thousand hu. All of these were proved to me.

There are sorcerers in the world, and many arts of illusion, and they can walk on fire and tread on blades, plant a melon and move a well, and in a moment change ten times and twenty. If what human strength does is already like this, how much more the divine powers and the answering of prayer, which cannot be measured — the jeweled banner (寶幢) a thousand li high, the seat a hundred yojanas wide, the turning of a place into a pure land, the marvelous stupa leaping up out of the ground.

Answer two. The proofs of belief and of slander are like shadow and echo, and the things heard with the ear and seen with the eye are already many. Sometimes a man's sincerity is not deep, or the bond of his deeds has not yet drawn its answer, and though the time runs out of course he receives the recompense in the end. Good conduct and bad are what blessing and calamity return to. The nine streams and the hundred schools all hold this same argument. Why call the Buddhist books alone empty and false? Xiang Tuo and Yan Hui cut off young, Bo Yi and Yuan Xian cold and hungry, Robber Zhi and Zhuang Qiao blessed and long of life, Duke Jing of Qi and Huan Tui rich and strong — draw these back to the deeds of an earlier life and look to a life to come, and they make better sense still. But if a man does good and happens to meet calamity, or does evil and happens to meet blessing, and at once resents it and calls it a cheat, then Yao and Shun are empty words too and the Duke of Zhou and Confucius are not real, and on what will he lean and trust and set up his life?

Answer three. Since the world was opened there have been many men who are not good and few who are, so how can purity be demanded of them all? Men see a famed monk of high conduct and put him aside and say nothing, and when they see a common monk who follows the ways of the world they bring out their slander at once. And if the learner is not diligent, how is that the teacher's fault? A common monk studying the sutras and the discipline — how does it differ from a man of the world studying the Shi jing and the Li ji? Measure the men of the court by the teaching of the Shi and the Li, and there is hardly one who carries it out whole. Shall those who have left the household be measured by the prohibitions of sutra and discipline, and shall they alone be required never to transgress? Besides, a minister whose conduct falls short still seeks salary and office; why should a company that has broken the prohibitions be ashamed to take offerings? In their keeping of the precepts there will of course be transgressions. But once a man has put on the robe of the law and is counted among the monks, what he keeps through the year — the fasts, the expounding, the reciting, the holding to it — set against those in white clothes, the distance is no less than between a mountain and the sea.

Answer four. The inner teaching has many roads, and leaving the household is only one method among them. If sincerity and filial duty are in the heart and humaneness and kindness are made the root, then like Sudatta (須達) and Jalavahana (流水) a man need not shave off beard and hair. Why should all the field land be emptied to raise stupas and monasteries, or every registered household be used up to make monks and nuns? All this comes of a government that could not set a measure, until at last monasteries against the law hinder the people's farming and monks without a calling empty the state's tax rolls. That is not the root meaning of the Great Awakened One. Consider it further. To seek the way is the plan of one's own person; to spare the cost is the plan of the state. The plan of the person and the plan of the state cannot both be carried through. A sincere minister follows his lord and gives up his parents; a filial son settles his house and forgets the state. Each has what he acts on. Among the Confucians are men who do not bend to king or lord and hold their calling high; among the hidden men are those who refused a throne and declined the chancellorship and fled the world into mountain and forest. How can their tax and their labor be counted up and they be called offenders? And if all the black-haired people could be transformed together and enter the place of the way, so that it were like the world of Wondrous Joy (妙樂) or the land of Sankha (禳佉), then there would be rice that grows of itself and treasure houses without end. Who would seek the profit of field and silkworm then?

Answer five. The body dies, but the spirit remains. While a man lives in the world he looks toward his later body as though it had nothing to do with him; but once he is dead, its tie to the earlier body is like that of age to youth, or evening to morning. There are souls in the world that show themselves in dreams, or come down upon a child or a concubine, or move a wife and children, asking for food and drink and begging for blessing and help, and these are not few. When men today are poor and low and sick and in pain, there is none who does not resent that he built no merit in a former life. Argue from this, and how can a man not prepare a place for what is to come? A man's sons and grandsons are of themselves only so many living creatures between heaven and earth. What have they to do with his own person? Yet he cherishes and guards them and leaves them his foundation. How much less, then, should he throw away his own spirit at a stroke. Ordinary men are covered over and do not see what is to come, and so they say that the life there and this life are not one body. If a man had the heavenly eye and saw how thought after thought passes away and life after life does not break off, how could he not be afraid? And a gentleman living in the world holds it precious to master himself and return to ritual, to help his age and profit others. He who governs a house wants the whole house blessed; he who governs a state wants the whole state good. Servants and concubines, ministers and people — what kinship have they with his own person, that he should toil and suffer and cultivate virtue for their sake? By that reckoning Yao and Shun and the Duke of Zhou and Confucius merely threw away their pleasure for nothing. When one man cultivates the way, how many living beings does he carry across? How many bodies does he free from guilt and burden? Think it through well, I beg you. If you look to the reckoning of the world, and set up a household, and cannot give up wife and children, and so cannot leave the household, then cultivate the precepts alongside it and set your heart on reciting and reading, and make of that a ford and a bridge to the life to come. A human birth is hard to get. Do not pass it in vain.

Even the gentleman of the Confucians keeps away from the kitchen. Having seen the creature alive he cannot bear to see it die, and having heard its cry he will not eat its flesh. Gao Chai and Zhe Xiang knew nothing of the inner teaching, and both could refrain from killing. This is the natural working of a humane man's heart. Of the company that holds life there is none that does not love its own. The putting away of killing — strive to do it. Men who love killing meet the proof of it when they die, and their sons and grandsons take the calamity. Such cases are very many and cannot all be set down, but I will show a few at the end.

In the time of Liang there was a man who always mixed the white of eggs into his hair wash, saying that it made the hair shine, and he used twenty or thirty eggs each time he washed. When he died, all that could be heard in his hair was the cheeping of several thousand chicks.

A Liu of Jiangling made his living selling eel soup. Later he had a son whose head was that of an eel, and only from the neck down was he a man.

When Wang Ke was grand warden of Yongjia, someone sent him a sheep, and he gathered guests for a feast. But the sheep's rope came loose, and it ran to one of the guests, knelt and bowed twice before him, and went inside his clothes. This guest said nothing of it to the end, and made no plea for the sheep to be spared. Before long the sheep was killed and made into soup, and the soup came first to that guest. One piece went into his mouth and at once went down under his skin and traveled all through his body, until in his pain he cried out, and only then did he tell what had happened. In the end he made the cry of a sheep and died.

When Emperor Xiaoyuan of Liang was at Jiangzhou, a man was made magistrate of Wangcai county. The revolt of Liu Jinggong had passed through, the county office had been burned, and he lodged in a monastery. When the people brought an ox and wine to pay their respects, the magistrate tied the ox to the banner pole, cleared away the images, spread out couch and mats, and received his guests in the hall. Just before it was killed the ox came loose and came straight to the steps and bowed. The magistrate laughed aloud and ordered his attendants to butcher it. He ate and drank until he was drunk and full, and lay down under the eaves. As he sobered a little he felt his body itch, and scratching it he raised a rash, and from that he came to have leprosy, and after ten years or so he died.

When Yang Sida was grand warden of Xiyang commandery, the revolt of Hou Jing came, and there was drought and dearth as well, and the starving people stole barley from the fields. Yang Sida sent one of his retainers to keep watch, and every thief he caught had his wrist cut off; more than ten men were maimed in all. Later that retainer had a son, and the boy was born with no hands.

In Qi there was a man of the post of fengchaoqing whose house was very rich and lavish, and he used to say that unless he killed the ox with his own hand the eating of it had no savor. At a little over thirty he fell gravely ill, and he saw oxen coming in great numbers, and his whole body felt as though it were stabbed with knives, and he died crying out.

Gao Wei of Jiangling came with me into Qi, and for several years he caught fish in the marshes of Youzhou. Later he fell ill, and he kept seeing shoals of fish biting him, and so he died.

There are foolish people in the world who do not know humaneness and right, and do not know that wealth and rank all come from the mandate of Heaven. They take a wife for their son and then resent that what she brings is too little, and leaning on the honor of being father-in-law and mother-in-law, with a nature venomous as a snake, they add slander to a poisonous mouth. Knowing nothing they should shrink from, they curse and abuse the bride's parents, and so they teach the bride to be unfilial to them, and never look to the hatred they make in another. They pity only their own son and daughter and have no love for their own son's wife. Of such people the dark world writes down the fault, and the spirits take away their span of years. Be careful not even to live next door to them, much less to bind yourself to them. Keep clear of them.