Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 24
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). A two-part exchange with a Daoist critic, who first catalogs the undignified fundraising theatrics of wandering monks, then points out how many monks live in Daoist shrines rather than proper Buddhist monasteries — Zhuhong, unable to fully rebut either charge, admits real fault on both counts rather than defending his own tradition reflexively.
93. 道譏釋（一）— A Daoist's Mockery of Buddhist Monks (Part One)
A Daoist acquaintance catalogs, in vivid and unflattering detail, the theatrical fundraising practices of wandering monks he has observed — and Zhuhong, unable to deny the charge outright, distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate solicitation rather than defending the practice reflexively.
有道者告予曰：「我輩冠簪，公等剃削。夫剃削者，應離世絕俗，奈何接踵於長途廣行募化者？罕遇道流而恆見緇輩也。有手持緣簿，如土地神前之判官者；有魚擊相應，高歌唱和，而談說因緣，如瞽師者；有扛抬菩薩像、神像而鼓樂喧填、贊勸捨施，如歌郎者；有持半片銅鐃，而鼓以竹箸，如小兒戲者；有拖鐵索，重數十百斤，如罪人者；有舉石自擊其身，如飲恨訴冤者；有整衣執香，沿途禮拜，挨家逐戶，如里甲抄排門冊者。清修法門或者有玷乎？」予無以應，徐而謂曰：「募化亦不等，有非理者，有合理者，有因正果正者，有瞞因昧果者，未可一概譏刺也。但其不務修行，而專求利養，為可恨耳。」因記此，願相與共戒之。
A Daoist practitioner once said to me: "We Daoists wear our hair bound up under a cap and hairpin, while you Buddhists shave your heads. Someone who has shaved his head ought properly to have left the world and cut himself off from worldly concerns entirely — so why is it that one sees an endless stream of such people traveling the roads, soliciting donations everywhere they go? One rarely meets a Daoist on the road, but constantly meets black-robed monks. Some carry a donation register, looking for all the world like the judge who stands before the local earth-god's shrine; some strike wooden fish and bells in unison, singing back and forth while narrating some tale of karmic causation, exactly like a blind street performer; some carry images of bodhisattvas or local deities on their shoulders amid a din of drums and music, exhorting people to give, exactly like a hired singer; some carry half a brass cymbal, beating it with bamboo chopsticks like a child at play; some drag iron chains weighing a hundred catties or more, as though they were convicted criminals; some strike themselves with stones, as though venting some bitter grievance; and some walk solemnly with incense in hand, bowing at every step, going door to door exactly like a local tax clerk registering households. Does this not bring real disgrace upon the practice of genuine cultivation?"
I had no answer to give him, and after a moment simply said: "Soliciting donations is not all of one kind. Some of it is improper, some of it entirely proper; some proceeds from a right cause to a right result, while some conceals its true cause and obscures its true result — one cannot condemn it all indiscriminately with a single mocking stroke. But it is certainly true that those who neglect genuine practice and devote themselves solely to seeking material support deserve real censure." I set this exchange down here in the hope that we might together take it as a warning to guard against.
This entry is unusual in this collection for the sustained, almost ethnographic specificity of its list of theatrical fundraising practices — donation registers, storytelling with wooden fish and bell, carried images accompanied by drums, self-mortification with chains and stones, door-to-door solicitation — vivid enough to suggest genuine firsthand observation of late-Ming popular religious street life rather than abstract complaint; Zhuhong's own response is notably non-defensive, conceding the substance of the Daoist's criticism while refusing only its indiscriminate sweep, a pattern of honest self-criticism toward his own tradition's abuses that recurs across this collection, including in entry 77's warning against monks who curry favor with the powerful.
94. 道譏釋（二）— A Daoist's Mockery of Buddhist Monks (Part Two)
The same Daoist critic returns with a sharper question — why do so many monks live in Daoist shrines and temples rather than in proper Buddhist monasteries? — and Zhuhong, unable to fully answer even his own counterexample, concedes the point almost entirely.
道者又曰：「諸宮、觀、道院及諸神廟，皆我等居也，奈何僧眾多住其中，罕見道流住佛寺者。夫歸依佛者住寺，歸依道者住宮、觀、院、廟，今僧居於此，為歸依三清諸天尊、諸真、諸神耶？抑欲占奪我等產業耶？」其言有理，予無以應，徐而曰：「韜光，古靈隱也，何道流居之？」曰：「此在家修習全真者寓焉，冠簪者不與也，況剃度一僧主之矣！」其言有理，予又無以應。噫！今之為僧者，或棲止叢林，或幽居蘭若，或依巖為室，或就樹結茅，何所不可，而必附彼羽衣以為居亭主人也？
The same Daoist practitioner also said to me: "All the palaces, temples, and shrines dedicated to our own deities properly belong to us; and yet monks so often live within them, while one rarely sees a Daoist living in a Buddhist monastery. Those who take refuge in the Buddha ought to live in Buddhist monasteries, and those who take refuge in the Dao ought to live in Daoist palaces, temples, and shrines. Now, when monks choose to live in our own shrines instead, is it because they have taken refuge in the Three Pure Ones, the celestial worthies, the perfected immortals, and the various gods of our own tradition? Or is it, rather, that they simply wish to seize and occupy our own property?" His words were reasonable, and I had no answer to give.
After a moment I said: "But Taoguang was originally an old branch temple of Lingyin — how is it that a Daoist now lives there?" He replied: "That particular site is now occupied by a lay practitioner of Complete Reality Daoism — someone who wears no cap or hairpin at all — and moreover, it is actually a fully ordained monk who presides over it!" His answer, too, was entirely reasonable, and again I had no response to give.
Ah! Monks today could just as well take shelter in a proper monastic community, dwell quietly in a secluded hermitage, build their own room against a mountain cliff, or thatch a hut beneath a tree — any of these would do perfectly well. Why, then, must they attach themselves to feathered-cap Daoists as tenants living under someone else's roof?
Taoguang was a genuine, historically real subsidiary temple of the famous Lingyin Monastery in Hangzhou, and "Complete Reality" (Quanzhen) Daoism was the actual, dominant northern Daoist monastic school of the period, whose practitioners — unlike ordinary lay Daoist priests — did sometimes adopt a celibate, monastery-based lifestyle superficially resembling Buddhist monasticism; Zhuhong's own counterexample backfiring on him, revealing that even a nominally Buddhist site had passed into mixed or Daoist hands, gives this entry a candor unusual even within this consistently self-critical collection, closing not with a rebuttal but with Zhuhong's own plain admission that monks have no real excuse for the arrangement his Daoist interlocutor describes.