Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 2

Tigers and leopards preying on other beasts, hawks and falcons preying on other birds, snakeheads, otters, cormorants, and herons preying on fish and shrimp and other aquatic creatures — these are simply the nature of ignorant animals. But for one who bears the human form and is endowed with human nature to kill living beings of every kind and eat their flesh — can this be right? Such a person is nothing but a tiger, leopard, hawk, falcon, snakehead, otter, cormorant, or heron in human form! And yet even so, a tiger's harm does not extend to creatures flying in the air, and a snakehead's harm does not extend to creatures walking on land; but human beings — whether in the sky above, in the deep waters below, or scattered throughout forest, mountain, and open field — use fishhooks, arrows, nets, and traps to capture every last one of them by every conceivable method, leaving nothing behind. In this, human harm to the world far exceeds that of any other creature. Confucius said: "Benevolence is what makes one human." Mencius said: "Benevolence is the human heart itself." If a person lacks benevolence, can he still be called human at all? Once one is truly called human, there can be no justification whatsoever for killing living beings and eating their flesh!

Burning an ox as an offering to Heaven is said, by popular tradition, to have originated in high antiquity, and every dynasty since has continued the practice. Even Emperor Wu of Liang, devout as he was in his Buddhist faith, though he substituted dough figures for sacrificial animals, did so only at the ancestral temple, never daring to do so at the southern suburban altar. History records that on the first xin day of the first month, a single bull was sacrificed to the Heavenly Sovereign Great Emperor; and since sacrifice to Heaven is always paired with sacrifice to one's own ancestors, the ox must have been present there as well — how, then, could dough offerings have been used at all? I do not know on what basis this claim was made.

Long ago, Lord Pei offered the full sacrifice of the "great feast" in honor of Confucius, and I have already said elsewhere that even this full sacrifice could hardly repay the debt owed to a sage teacher — how much less, then, could it repay the debt owed to the Emperor on High! And yet, from ancient times to the present, this remains a great state ceremony — who could possibly persuade anyone to abolish it? How sorrowful, O ox! How deep and lasting must your own karma be, to have come to this!

Mr. Wang of Huaiting held that the hunting net was devised by Fuxi because wild animals were damaging the crops — the net was set up as a defense against them, not as a means of capturing them for food. This is why the characters for "farming" and "fishing" both contain the character for "field" hidden within them. Mr. Wang's theory brings to light something never before articulated in all of history, and may truly be said to render great service to the moral order of the world!

Someone might object: "It was Emperor Yan who first began cultivating crops, and was therefore called Shennong — in Fuxi's own time there were no crops yet at all, so what purpose could the hunting net possibly have served?" I would extend the earlier point further in reply: even in ancient times, before crops were cultivated, people still ate the fruits of wild plants and trees, which functioned as their own kind of crop. And besides, among humans and animals alike, the strong prevail over the weak — the net was set up precisely so that wild animals, made fearful, would keep their distance, teaching the people how to avoid harm from them, not teaching the people to capture and eat their flesh. Capturing animals in order to eat them was a corrupt practice that developed only in later generations — it was never the sage's own original intention.

Elder Bianrong of the capital once said: "Bathwater, once it has settled clear again, can still be used to rinse rice and cook it." Some took this as a joke, others as words spoken in a moment of passionate exaggeration. I believe neither is correct — it was, in fact, simply the plain truth.

I once traveled by grain barge to Danyang; the boats were lashed together bow to stern for more than ten li, and because the river was narrow and shallow, people habitually washed their clothes there, washed their feet there, and relieved themselves there as well — the water was filthy in the extreme — and yet that very same water was also habitually used for cooking and boiling food. Only the truly wealthy ever bothered to climb the riverbank in search of a well or a spring. What difference, then, is there really between river water and bathwater?

Consider Geng Gong, besieged and cut off from water, forced to wring out and drink the liquid squeezed from horse dung; or consider the region beyond the frontier wall, where for forty li around, people wait for rainfall to have anything to drink at all, digging wells dozens of zhang deep without ever striking water. Alas! In the realm of the hungry ghosts, kalpa upon kalpa passes without so much as hearing the very word "water." And yet monks today, dwelling beside clear streams and flowing springs, with tea, hot water, and washing water all available at will, still bathe eight times a month and consider it too few, or even fifteen times a month and still consider it too few — how can they fail to feel any shame at all, that it should come to this!

Zhang Zishao, from the time he was a mere licentiate scholar all the way to placing first in the palace examination and rising to a position at the very center of government, wore only coarse clothing and ate only plain food, kept no collection of curiosities or fine objects, and even used his own brush pens down to their last worn bristles. Hu Keren, while serving as a magistrate, ate nothing but vegetables his entire life, and slept beneath a simple paper canopy. These men, while occupying the body of a government official, still practiced the conduct of a mendicant monk — how much more, then, should this be expected of one who is actually a monk himself!

The Buddha established that monks following the ascetic disciplines should beg for their food, wear cast-off rags as clothing, and lodge among graves or beneath trees. Today's monks, by contrast, dwelling within a community, receive offerings sent directly to the monastery — clothing enough, food enough, dwelling safely within a peaceful monastery — and still seek out finer, more beautiful things besides. How can this possibly be right? Under the precepts, a single bowl may be mended as many as four times before a new one is sought; and the eminent monk Huixiu of the Liu Song dynasty wore a single pair of monastic sandals for thirty years — proof that this noble tradition of the ancients has not yet been entirely lost. I set this down here out of my own shame and self-reproach, and to share this same reminder with my fellow companions on the path.

The Buddha's own monastic code holds that a monk who has left the household life need not bow to his own parents, while the law of kings requires monks and Daoist priests to bow to their parents. Someone asked: "If one follows the Buddha's code, one violates the king's law; if one obeys the king's law, one goes against the Buddha's code — what, then, should one do?" I would say this presents no real difficulty at all — the two can proceed together without contradiction. Let the monk, upon meeting his own parents, always bow, saying to himself: "These are my own parents — and yet they are also, in this moment, like the Buddha himself." And let the parents, when their son bows to them, either step aside to avoid the bow, or return it with a bow of their own, saying: "This is a disciple of the Buddha — not merely my own child." Would this not allow both principles to be fully honored at once?