The Way of the Buddha佛道

As for the Way of the Buddha (佛道), its Law first flowed eastward in the time of Emperor Ming of the Later Han. From that time its teaching spread little by little, and from emperors and kings down to the common people there was none who did not turn his heart to it. Scriptures and instructions piled up in abundance, and the meaning of the teaching was deep and far-reaching, so that it became a school of learning on its own. In the twelfth year of Yuanjia, Xiao Mozhi, Governor of Danyang, memorialized: "The transforming teaching of the Buddha has been laid upon the Middle Kingdom for four dynasties now, and images, pagodas and temples are counted in the thousands everywhere. Looked at one way they can bind the heart; looked at the other they are enough to call men to good. Yet of late the reverent heart floats upon the outer form. Men do not take pure sincerity as the highest thing, and count rivalry in luxury the weightier. The old halls fall in ruins and are never repaired, while each strives to build anew and vie with the rest. Fine mansions and great houses are all but used up in this, and timber, bamboo, bronze and colours are wasted without end. It has nothing to do with the spirits, and it burdens the affairs of men. Building beyond the measure ought to be checked and restrained; if it is not guarded against, the drifting and the evasion will not cease. I ask that from now on whoever would cast a bronze image must come to the central offices (臺省) and declare it himself; and whoever would raise a pagoda, a temple or a hermitage must first go to the officer of two thousand piculs in that place and speak of it, and the commandery, following the facts, shall set it out in a report to its own province, and only after leave has come back may the work begin. Whoever builds a temple house on his own shall be dealt with under the statute on not obeying an imperial decree, and the bronze, the buildings, the woods and the gardens shall all be taken into the government." A decree granted it. A sifting was also made among the monks, and several hundred gave up the Way.

In the second year of Daming under Shizu a man of the Way named Tanbiao plotted rebellion with Gao She, a man of the Qiang. Because of this the emperor sent down a decree: "The Law of the Buddha has gone false and fallen away, and monks are mixed and confused. They are not enough to hold up and save the great teaching, and have become nothing but a thicket for runaways. Besides, treacherous hearts rise up again and again, and their evil doings are heard of many times over. They break and disorder the customs of the people, and men and spirits alike resent them. Let this be handed to the places concerned and a careful sifting be made; and if any offend hereafter, let them be punished with severity." Thereupon many prohibitions were set up, and all who were not pure and hard in the keeping of the precepts were made to return to lay life. But the nuns of the various temples went in and out of the palace and made ties with the consorts and the empresses, so in the end this rule could not be carried out.

Before this, in the time of Jin, Yu Bing first raised the proposal that monks should pay reverence to the ruler, and later Huan Xuan set out the same meaning again, but neither came to anything. In the sixth year of Daming, Shizu had the officers in charge memorialize: "Your servants have heard that deep halls and lofty dwellings are not meant for height and steepness, and that the clasped fist, the kneeling, the coiling and the prostration do not stop at reverence; they are to spread out the four bonds (四維) and to knit and order the eight quarters. Therefore, though the Confucians and the Legalists branch apart and the School of Names and the Mohists divide into strands, in honouring kin and holding superiors in awe what they follow does not differ. Only the teaching of the Futu (浮圖) came from far off at Longdui. It overturns the classics and drags along its own transmission; its teaching is remote and its matters are distant. The tempering of life and the polishing of knowledge are what the common world always calls hard, its main purport has faded far away, and its subtle words are sunk and cut off, while bondage to the letter that veils the Way is fanned all the more at the end of the stream. And so they overstep measure and law and sit haughtily before the honoured. They lose the far traces of following the way of each place, and go astray from the deep meaning of shaping and teaching. Now the Law of the Buddha nourishes itself with humility and thrift and takes loyalty and reverence for its Way. The monk Never Despising bowed to whomever he met, and Mulian the monk paid his respects whenever he met an elder. How then can they bend the knee to the four ranks of disciples yet make the rites to their two parents slight, and knock their foreheads to a monk of many years yet stand straight-bodied before the lord of ten thousand chariots? Therefore the proposal was made in the Xiankang years and set out again in Yuanxing, but the matter was bent by one party and the Way was broken by the remaining faction. Now the great source washes far and wide and the many streams look up to the mirror; the nine immortals (九仙) bring their treasures and the hundred spirits strive at their duties. Yet within the capital there dwell people who are no subjects, and between the steps of the throne and the mat there are received guests who match rites with the ruler. We fear this is not the way to make the standard of manners clear and one, or to show the bright rule in full. Your servants have taken counsel together, and hold that when monks come into audience they should give the full form of reverent obeisance, while their own customs (本俗) are left to them. Then the fair order of the court will have its degrees, and the following of the way of each place will be achieved as well." A decree granted it. At the beginning of the Former Deposed Emperor the old way was restored.

When Lady Yin, the honoured consort whom Shizu favoured, died, a temple was built for her. Because the consort's son Zilan had been enfeoffed as Prince of Xin'an, Xin'an was taken for the temple's name. The Former Deposed Emperor killed Zilan, and then tore down and abolished Xin'an Temple and drove out its monks, and before long he pulled down Zhongxing Temple, Tianbao Temple and others as well. When Taizong had put down the disorder he gave out an order: "The late emperor founded Zhongxing and Xin'an and the other temples in order to leave a pattern for long ages and to spread the flourishing teaching wide. Of late they met a dark and cruel time; the images of the Law were broken and ruined, and the masters and their companies fled and scattered. This grieves me greatly. Their fine teaching and deep counsel have in them something that holds up the teaching of names. Let the old monks be called together, and let each return to his own temple; and let the officers of works (材官) repair and rebuild as may be fitting."

Among the famous monks of the age of Song there was Daosheng. Daosheng was a man of Pengcheng. His father was Magistrate of Guangqi. Sheng left home and became a disciple of the monk Fada. From his youth he was quick of understanding, and at fifteen he was already able to expound the scriptures. When he grew up he had an uncommon reading of them and set up the meaning of sudden awakening (頓悟), and the men of that time looked up to him and were convinced. In the eleventh year of Yuanjia he died on Mount Lu, and the monk Huilin made a dirge for him.

Huilin was a man of Qin County in Qin Commandery, and his family name was Liu. He left home while young and lived at Yecheng Temple. He had a gift for writing and had both the outer learning and the inner, and so he was known to Yizhen, Prince of Luling. He once wrote the Treatise on Equal Goodness (均善論), and its words are these:

"There was a master of White Learning (白學) who held that the sages of the Middle Kingdom ordered a hundred ages, so wide was their virtue, and that their wisdom went round ten thousand changes, so that the principles of heaven and of man were exhausted; that in their Way there was no hidden purport and in their teaching no fish-trap left behind; and that for keen and wise clarity they fell short of no other doctrine. There was an adept of Black Learning (黑學) who thought little of this, saying that it did not light the road of the dark world below and did not reach the transforming of the life to come, and that though it honoured the emptying of the heart it could not empty affairs, and so did not come up to the depth of the Western Region. Thereupon White asked wherein it was that they did not come up to it.

White asked, 'Is the emptiness (空) that the school of Shi discusses the same as the emptiness that the school of Lao speaks of, or different?' Black answered, 'Different. The school of Shi makes emptiness right in things, so that emptiness and things are one; the school of Lao lets being and non-being both run, so that emptiness and being are two. How can they be the same?' White said, 'The school of Shi empties things. Are things truly empty?' Black said, 'They are. Emptiness is empty again, and it does not stop at emptiness.' White said, 'The three ranks (三儀) are numinous and long-lasting in the universe, and the ten thousand kinds are born in fullness between heaven and earth. What of this is empty?' Black answered, 'It empties the being of their own nature (自性); it does no harm to the body they borrow from causes. Frame many timbers into a great hall, and there is no substance that is the bedchamber itself; pile hair upon hair to the girth of an armful, and there is no body that is the sandalwood itself. Nothing living stays even a moment, and Mount Tai has not the firmness of a few breaths. Rising and passing away have no constancy, and among causes there is no master. What I empty lies in nature and principle (性理), while what you press me on you set in the use of affairs (事用). I hold that to be a mistake.' White said, 'Is the emptiness of what is called true reality (實相) like that?' Black said, 'It is.' White said, 'The principle of floating change goes back and forth before the eyes, and it is what all who see and hear know alike. You unravel it and call that mounting the seat of the Way; you make it weighty and make light of other learning. Truly I do not see its depth.' Black said, 'This principle seems near, but seek it and it is far indeed. What the feelings hold weighty is empty, and what may be held weighty in fact is real. Now empty what pretends to be real and part from what floats and is false, and the delusion of love and desire cannot but go. If love and desire go and a man still does not mount the seat of the Way, I do not know what words I should use to make it clear to him.' White said, 'Now though you split a hair and empty the tree, the thickness of its hanging shade does not go; though you leave the timber and empty the hall, nothing is taken from its grandeur and beauty. Make clear that nothing lasts, and it only adds to the wish to rest in the shade; set out what is void, and it only makes heavier the thought of racing with the hours.

Figured brocade shines only when its colours are many, and broth is brought to its savour by salt and plum. The lord of Qi longed for the joy of the days of Shuangjiu, and the king of Yan had no art for lengthening his years. I fear that your argument of joining and blending, and your teaching of what is perilous and brittle, are just enough to make men long for the desires they relish, and cannot tip over the delusion of their grasping and striving.' Black said, 'That is truly a principle cut off from the Chinese lands, one the old records do not reach.' White said, 'The saying that a mountain is high by the piling of low things, the song that a river is made by the gathering of small ones, the talk of the boat in the valley and of the fire passed on, the arguments of hard-and-white (堅白) and of the empty market (唐肆) — these fill the Middle Kingdom. It is only because they are not the inmost part of principle that they were not brought forward as the root of the teaching. You truly say that you cast off feeling and cast off entanglement and take the emptying of the heart for your Way; yet when you split and divide by leaning on affairs, does that not come out from between your own palms?' Black said, 'The teaching of the Duke of Zhou and of Confucius reaches only a single age. It does not see the endless chain of causes in the life to come. Goodness heaped up goes no further than blessing for sons and grandsons, and evil heaped up no further than the punishment of a curse left over; reward stops at glory and salary, and blame stops at want and low estate. Beyond what is seen and heard they are dark and do not know, and that is truly to be pitied. Sakyamuni opens up an endless work and draws men out of the peril of gate upon gate. He tempers the thoughts of the square inch, and the universe is not enough to fill his brightness; he sets forth the saving of one compassion, and all living things are not enough to bear his transforming. He sets out the hells, and the people fear their sins; he spreads out the heavens, and all things rejoice in their blessing. He points to Nirvana (泥洹) as the long homecoming, and rides the body of the Law to look far off. There is nowhere his divine changes do not go round, and nowhere his numinous bounty does not reach. Those awakened first fly up to the world above, and those awakened after cannot fly up to follow them. With the narrow measure of a frog in a well, how should you know the house of the great way?' White said, 'Truly you can make your words great. Yet put his divine light to the test and there is not an inch of brightness; prove his divine changes and there is not a thread of a marvel. Those who have given their whole sincerity have not seen the form of his good saving, and those who have studied in earnest have not made good the fact of rising into the void. They speak of a life without measure — but who has seen an old man of a hundred years? They sigh at the firmness of the diamond — but where is the stuff that does not rot to be seen?

Where it does not fit the facts, one ought to seek the intent behind the words set up and let go the saying they were lodged in. Besides, to hold out heaven and so move men to good — how is that like serving righteousness and treading the Way? To frighten men with hell and so keep the body in order — how is that like following principle and making the heart upright? To bow and worship and seek to be let off one's sins does not come from a mind of reverent care; to give one thing and hope for a hundredfold is not to ride upon a heart free of grudging. Praise the joy of Nirvana, and the thought of ease and idleness is born; extol the marvel of the body of the Law, and a heart fond of the strange takes its start. The near desire has not been stilled before the far gain rises up again. Though you say the Bodhisattva is without desire, living beings have desire from the first. You barely save a people worn out by their troubles, and you open for ever a custom of striving for gain. Can the spirit be cleared and the Way returned to by this?' Black said, 'It is not so. If they are not shown the desire of the life to come, by what shall one weigh the blockage of the life they are in? The feelings of things cannot come all at once, and so one heaps up little by little and lures them on. One takes away this moment and bargains for that endlessness. If a man is not diligent in the spring planting, how shall he look for the autumn harvest? He who sits upright at the bottom of a well and only rests his many thoughts will sink for ever below the nine springs.' White said, 'How strange! How crooked is the thing you labour at. The Way lies in being without desire, yet you bargain for it with desire. That is to go north and look for Ying (郢), to march west and search for Yue (越). You will only wander long in the dark capital (幽都) and stay for ever astray in the valley of dusk (昧谷). Could the far lands of Min and Chu ever be seen? What is called heaping up little by little means taking away day by day. One ought first to let go what is light and after that to forget what is heavy, so that gain and desire fall away day by day and plain whiteness comes of itself. How can a man demand much with little and exchange the marvellous for the coarse, so that in the space of a glance down and a glance up nothing moves but for gain? Where gain sweeps all before it, is there any end?

And so vermilion and blue dazzle the eye that loves fine colours, and earth and timber puff up the heart that boasts of the fine and the grand. They raise a road of wasteful spending and use up the wealth of the nine domains; they set up work that has no use and cut into what living men need at once. They make a scheme of building and raising and turn it into a power planted for themselves; they labour at the work of urging conversion and knit together the strength of a master's party. With hard and bitter discipline they demand a name for keen effort, and under cover of guarding the Law they unfold a heart of overbearing rivalry. It is a sad thing. Where then does the Way lodge? This is why the Duke of Zhou and Confucius made the customs of men solid and did not meddle with what lies beyond seeing and hearing, and why Laozi and Zhuangzi shaped the manners of men and only kept careful watch over the portion of their nature.' Black said, 'The three wanderings (三遊) had their root in benevolence and righteousness, and Robber Zhi took the five goodnesses for his stock in trade. In the ills that come of the traces of sages, how is there an inside and an outside? Besides, of the house of Huang and Lao, the forgeries of talismans and the lying of water-charms cannot all be told over. You are easy about those and startled at these; you play in muddy water and turn away from a clear pool.' White said, 'Where there are traces there cannot but be ills, and where there are arts there cannot but be forgeries; this is what the sage held to be fetters. What I regret now is that a law is made upon greed and so becomes the custom, and men do not set its ills straight but think it lofty instead. As for the lewd and reckless sort, the world of itself holds them low; their source and their stream are of no account, and they were never worth arguing over.' Black said, 'By your argument goodness is nearly the same in both. Then is the matter finished with this life?' White said, 'The principle of the dark world below certainly cannot be exhausted in the affairs of men.

The Duke of Zhou and Confucius doubted and did not judge, and Sakyamuni judged but did not prove; so one ought to set aside the traces of what they showed and what they hid, and keep the purport that matters in them. Let me try to say it. To lead men with benevolence and righteousness is to have them yield to principle and follow the teaching; to guide them with urging and warning is to have them follow gain and move toward goodness. Therefore sweet words rise up where there is desire and die away when principle is understood, and plain words move where heaven has given understanding and come to rest where there is greed and falsehood. So the showing of the life to come is what the Taoists and the Buddhists, unable to do otherwise, used to veil the Way; and the shutting off of what is dark and hidden agrees in secret with the Duke of Zhou and Confucius stopping up the openings. Arguing from this, he who speaks has not surely known far, he who knows has not surely gained, and he who does not know has not surely lost. One knows only that the six crossings (六度) go along with the five teachings (五敎), and that faith and obedience (信順) stand level with compassion. The roads differ but the homecoming is the same, and a man must not keep to the ruts made by the first turn of the wheel.'"

The treatise went abroad in the world, and the older monks, holding that it disparaged and cast down the school of Shi, wished to shut him out. But Taizu saw the treatise and praised it, and in the Yuanjia years Huilin came to have a part in the seats of power, so that all the great affairs of the court were discussed with him. Guests gathered at his gate like spokes to a hub, and there were always several tens of carriages before his door; presents came in an unbroken line from the four quarters, and his power outweighed that of all his time. His notes on the Xiao jing and on the Free and Easy Wandering chapter of the Zhuangzi, and his essays, were handed down in the world.

There were also the men of the Way Huiyan and Huiyi, who both lived at Dong'an Temple. Their learning and their conduct were fine and well ordered, and monks and laymen alike looked up to them. At that time there were many monks of meditation at Douchang Temple, and the men of the capital had a saying for it: "Douchang is the cave of the meditation masters; Dong'an is the grove of discourse on the meaning (談義)."

In the fourth year of Daming under Shizu a feast was set out at Zhongxing Temple. There was one strange monk whom none of the company knew. They asked his name, and he answered that his name was Minghui and that he had come from Tian'an Temple, and then of a sudden he was not to be seen. There was no temple of that name under heaven, and so Zhongxing was renamed Tian'an Temple. In the Daming years the foreign monk Moheyan, hard and bitter in his discipline and fine in his reasoning, brought out many new scriptures in the capital, and the Srimala Sutra came to be prized above all in the inner learning (內學).