Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Second Collection, Part 15
Continuing the Second Collection (二筆). This section pairs two ghost stories about thought itself being invisible only when truly absent, a scholar's clever analogy resolving a friend's doubts about the Pure Land's nine grades, and Zhuhong's own sober assessment — using a documented Tang prophecy — of how rare genuine practitioners had become even a few centuries after Mazu's own thriving assembly.
128. 願力 — The Power of Vows
A Song chancellor's daily prayer for devout descendants, fulfilled across several generations, becomes an argument that a vow depending entirely on oneself — rebirth in the Pure Land — ought to be even more reliable than one depending on others.
呂文正公每晨興禮佛，祝云：「不信三寶者，願弗生我家。願子孫世世食祿，護持佛法。」後呂氏所出，若公著、若好問、若用中，皆貴顯而奉佛。夫文正亦祇是人世之善願，而竟酬所期，至累世不絕，況求生淨土，為出世間之大願乎！文正之願，取必於子孫者，得否未可知；況求生淨土，取必於自己者乎！故知淨土不成，良以其精誠之未至耳。昔有貴室，供養一僧，問僧云：「師百年後，肯來某家否？」僧一笑，遂為其子。近世總戎范君，亦其父所供僧也。二事正類。夫一時之笑諾，即孕質於豪門；豈得積久之精誠，不托胎於蓮品？因果必然，無容擬議矣！
Lord Lü Wenzheng, every morning when paying homage to the Buddha, would pray: "May no one who disbelieves in the Three Jewels ever be born into my family. May my descendants, generation after generation, hold office and protect the Buddha-dharma." Later, among Lü's own descendants, men such as Gongzhu, Haowen, and Yongzhong all rose to eminent rank while devoutly upholding Buddhism.
Wenzheng's own prayer was, after all, only an ordinary worldly wish — and yet it was fulfilled completely, continuing unbroken across several generations. How much more so, then, seeking rebirth in the Pure Land through Buddha-recitation, which is a vow that transcends this world entirely! Wenzheng's own wish depended on his descendants, and whether it would be fulfilled could not be known within his own lifetime — but seeking rebirth in the Pure Land depends entirely on oneself! From this we know: if rebirth in the Pure Land is not achieved, it must simply be that one's own sincerity has not yet been sufficient.
Long ago, a wealthy household supported a certain monk for many years, and asked him: "After you pass away, master, would you be willing to be reborn into our family?" The monk smiled once in reply — and was indeed later reborn as their own son. In recent times, a certain military commander surnamed Fan was likewise the reincarnation of a monk his own father had once supported. These two cases are exactly alike. If a single moment's smiling assent was enough to secure rebirth into a wealthy household, how could sustained, deeply sincere devotion over a long period possibly fail to secure rebirth within a lotus of the Pure Land itself? This is simply the inevitable working of cause and effect, admitting no room for doubt at all!
Lü Mengzheng is the same Song chancellor already discussed in entry 52 above for the (likely apocryphal) poem-and-temple legend Zhuhong distrusted; here Zhuhong cites the historically documented outcome instead — Lü's descendants Lü Gongzhu, Lü Haowen, and Lü Yongzhong were all genuine, eminent officials across successive generations, giving the entry's central analogy real biographical weight rather than resting on legend alone.
129. 不起念一 — Not Giving Rise to a Single Thought, First Note
Two paired anecdotes — a Song chancellor unmoved by his own broken garden fence, and a Chan master invisible to a local spirit except in the single instant a stray thought arose — illustrating how rare true mental stillness actually is.
李文靖公庭前藥欄壞，如不聞見，左右請葺之。公曰：「安可以此事動吾一念乎？」仰山（應為「洞山」）住院，土地神欲一參覲而久不可得。一日，師偶入香積，行人有翻壞食器者，師不覺起念云：「信施可惜。」土地神遂得展禮。則師於平日，蓋一念不起者矣！故曰：「一念未起，鬼神莫知。」又曰：「離念相者，等虛空界。」而我輩從朝至暮，浮思亂想，層見疊興，不知其幾千萬億，欲超生死、證涅槃，其可得哉？
Lord Li Wenjing's own garden fence had fallen into disrepair, and he acted as though he had neither seen nor heard of it; his attendants asked whether they should repair it. He said: "How could I possibly let such a trivial matter disturb even a single thought of mine?"
When Master Dongshan was abbot of his monastery, the local earth-spirit sought for a long time to pay him a visit, but could never manage to find him. One day, the master happened to enter the kitchen storeroom, and seeing a worker who had broken some dishes, could not help but give rise to the thought: "What a pity to waste the donors' offerings!" Only then was the earth-spirit finally able to find him, and pay him proper reverence. This shows that, in his ordinary daily life, the master truly never gave rise to a single thought at all! And so it is said: "Before a single thought arises, even spirits and ghosts cannot perceive it." It is also said: "One free from the marks of thought is equal to the realm of empty space itself." And yet we ordinary people, from morning until evening, drift through scattered, chaotic thoughts, arising one upon another without end, in numbers beyond counting — how could we possibly hope, in this state, to transcend birth and death and realize nirvana?
Li Wenjing is Li Hang, a genuine and celebrated Song chancellor nicknamed "the wordless gourd" for his habitual reticence; the source text's own attribution of the temple-guardian story to "Yangshan" appears to be a copying error for "Dongshan" (Dongshan Liangjie, founder of the Caodong lineage), whose recorded exchange with his monastery's local earth-spirit is preserved in the Blue Cliff Record — the same collection already cited several times elsewhere in this project.
130. 不起念二 — Not Giving Rise to a Single Thought, Second Note
A folk ghost story in which a Daoist practitioner's compassionate rescue of a stranger draws a spirit's wrath, only for the spirit to find him invisible so long as his mind remains perfectly still.
昔有道者，結庵於溪側，夜聞窗外云：「明日有戴鐵帽子者當替代我。」道者知鬼也。明日將暮，大雨，溪水驟漲，一男子頂釜，冒雨欲渡，道者急止之。至夜，窗外復云：「三年俟候得一人，又為這先生所救，必有以報之。」道者端坐室中，鬼遶室周遍覓之不得，悵怏而去。良由一念不起故也。蓋人之所覓者形，而鬼神之所覓者心也，心空而形與之俱空矣。孰曰黃冠無人哉？吾輩當取以自勗。
Long ago, there was a certain Daoist practitioner who built a hermitage beside a stream. One night he heard a voice outside his window say: "Tomorrow, someone wearing an iron hat will come to take my place." The practitioner knew at once this was a spirit speaking. The next day, toward evening, a heavy rain fell and the stream suddenly rose, and a man carrying an iron pot on his head tried to wade across through the downpour — the practitioner rushed to stop him. That night, the voice outside his window spoke again: "I waited three full years to find this one person, and now he has been saved by this gentleman — I must find some way to repay him for it!" The practitioner sat perfectly still within his own room, and the spirit searched every corner of the hermitage without ever finding him, and finally left in bitter disappointment. This was entirely because he had let not a single thought arise. For what an ordinary person searches for is physical form, while what a spirit searches for is the mind itself — once the mind is empty, the physical form becomes empty right along with it. Who, then, could say there are no genuine practitioners among Daoist priests? We Buddhist disciples ought to take this story as our own encouragement.
The closing line — "who could say there are no genuine practitioners among Daoist priests" — is a small but deliberate gesture on Zhuhong's part, using a folk tale about a Daoist practitioner to illustrate a Buddhist principle without diminishing the practitioner's own tradition; it fits naturally alongside his earlier, more measured treatment of Daoist inner alchemy in entry 123 above, both cases of Zhuhong crediting genuine attainment across tradition lines while still keeping the traditions' own goals distinct.
131. 九品往生 — The Nine Grades of Rebirth
A clever rebuttal to a skeptical scholar's analogy between the Pure Land and an inferior path to office, turning his own comparison against him by pointing out that the Pure Land's nine grades include a genuine "top candidate" tier.
士人有薄淨土而不修者，曰：「譬如吾輩，當以科名入仕，奈何作歲貢授官耶？」一士人云：「此喻大謬。蓮臺自分九品，公何不取其最上，而甘作下品乎？今進士科三百，亦可分上中下而九品之也，公何不取彼魁元，而甘作榜尾乎？上品上生，即蓮科之榜首也。故頌之者曰：『三心圓發，諦理深明，金臺隨往，即證無生。』其在宗門，則大徹大悟，而所謂『心空及第歸』者，此也。」向士人憮然曰：「吾疑於是冰泮。」
There was a scholar who looked down on the Pure Land and refused to practice it, saying: "It is as though we scholars, who ought to enter office through examination success, were instead willing to accept appointment through a mere annual tribute recommendation — why would anyone accept that?" Another scholar replied: "Your analogy is deeply mistaken. The lotus platform itself is divided into nine grades — why would you not simply aim for the very highest, rather than being content with the lowest? Today's metropolitan examination selects some three hundred scholars, who can likewise be divided into nine grades, high, middle, and low — why would you not aim to be the very top candidate, rather than being content to rank last? The highest of the highest grade of rebirth is exactly the top candidate among the lotus grades. And so a verse in its praise says: 'The three minds fully arisen, the ultimate truth deeply understood, one is borne away upon the golden platform, realizing the unborn at once.' Within the Chan tradition, this corresponds exactly to great and thorough awakening — what is called 'returning having passed the examination with an empty mind.'" The first scholar, startled, said: "My doubts about the Pure Land have melted away completely."
The closing phrase, "returning having passed the examination with an empty mind" (心空及第歸), comes from a real awakening verse by the Tang-dynasty layman Pang Yun, composed after a famous exchange with Mazu Daoyi in which Mazu answered his question about the one who "keeps company with no dharma" by telling him to wait until he could swallow the entire West River in a single gulp — a deliberately impossible demand that provoked Pang's own sudden breakthrough, which he described using exactly the examination imagery this entry's rebuttal turns back on the skeptical scholar.
132. 千僧無一衲子 — A Thousand Monks Without a Single True Practitioner
A Tang master's own prophecy — fulfilled precisely as foretold — that his eventual thousand-monk assembly would contain not a single genuine practitioner, used as evidence for how rapidly and how far the number of true practitioners had already fallen even centuries before Zhuhong's own time.
龍興靖公，受知於雪峰大師。峰記靖云：「汝他日住持，座下千僧無一衲子。」後靖應錢王之請，住持龍興，果眾千餘，皆三藏誦習之徒而已，一如峰記。昔馬大師得人之多，其成大器者至八十八人；靖去馬師年不甚遠，而衲子之難得，乃千中罕見其一，況今時乎！人間無十善，則天類衰；僧中無衲子，則佛種斷。近且不知「衲子」之謂何也，法道伶仃，如線欲絕，悲夫！
Master Longxing Jing received recognition from Master Xuefeng. Xuefeng predicted of him: "In the future, when you become an abbot, among the thousand monks beneath you, there will not be a single true practitioner." Later, Jing accepted an invitation from the King of Wu-Yue and became abbot of Longxing Monastery, and indeed gathered more than a thousand monks — all of them mere reciters and students of the Tripiṭaka, exactly as Xuefeng had predicted.
In the past, Master Ma gained many disciples, and as many as eighty-eight of them became great vessels of the Dharma. Master Jing lived not so very long after Master Ma's own time, and yet true practitioners were already so rare that scarcely one could be found in a thousand — how much more so, then, in our own age! When the human world lacks the ten wholesome deeds, the heavenly realms themselves decline; when the sangha lacks true practitioners, the buddha-seed itself is cut off. These days, people scarcely even know what the term "true practitioner" means at all — the Way has grown so frail, like a thread on the verge of snapping. How sorrowful!
Xuefeng Yicun is the same eminent Tang master whose monastery founding is discussed in entry 38's account of the great historical assemblies above; his prediction to Zongjing, later fulfilled to the letter at Longxing Monastery under the patronage of the Wuyue kings, gives Zhuhong a documented, dated data point roughly two centuries after Mazu's own flourishing assembly — letting him argue from historical record, rather than mere impression, that the decline he laments throughout this collection (compare entries 38, 39, and 122 above) was already well underway long before his own era.