Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 26
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). A deeply personal entry redefining true filial piety as helping one's parents escape the cycle of rebirth entirely, written in the shadow of Zhuhong's own regret at having lost both parents before he could offer them this greater gift — followed by a careful argument against circulating a well-meaning but forged sutra, however pious its content.
97. 出世間大孝 — The Great Filial Piety That Transcends the World
A deeply personal entry, written in the shadow of Zhuhong's own regret at losing both parents before he could offer them this greater gift, redefining true filial piety not as worldly care or honor but as helping one's parents escape the cycle of rebirth entirely.
世間之孝三，出世間之孝一。世間之孝，一者承歡侍綵，而甘旨以養其親；二者登科入仕，而爵祿以榮其親；三者修德勵行，而成聖成賢以顯其親。是三則世間之所謂孝也。出世間之孝，則勸其親齋戒奉道，一心念佛，求願往生，永別四生，長辭六趣，蓮胎托質，親覲彌陀，得不退轉。人子報親，於是為大。予昔甫知入道，而二親云亡，作《自傷不孝文》以伸悲恨。今見在家、出家二眾中有具慶者，於是倍增感慨，而涕泗交零，稽首、頓首以勸。
Worldly filial piety takes three forms; the filial piety that transcends the world takes only one. Of worldly filial piety: the first is to attend upon one's parents with joy and care, nourishing them with fine food and drink; the second is to pass the examinations and enter government service, bringing them honor through official rank and salary; the third is to cultivate virtue and strive in conduct, becoming a sage or worthy person and so bringing them glory. These three are what the world calls filial piety.
The filial piety that transcends the world, by contrast, means encouraging one's parents to observe the precepts and follow the Buddhist path, to recite the Buddha's name with an undivided mind, and to seek rebirth in the Pure Land — permanently leaving behind the four modes of birth, forever departing the six realms of rebirth, taking form within a lotus, personally beholding Amitābha Buddha, and attaining the stage of non-retrogression. For a child to repay a parent's kindness in this way is the greatest filial act of all.
When I myself first came to know the Buddhist path, my own parents had already both passed away, and I wrote an essay titled Grieving My Own Unfilial Conduct to give voice to my sorrow and regret. Now, seeing among both lay and monastic practitioners those whose parents are still living, my own feelings of regret are redoubled — tears and grief overwhelm me, and I bow my head to the ground again and again in urging them to seize this opportunity.
Zhuhong's own essay Grieving My Own Unfilial Conduct is a genuine, independently documented work from his collected writings, and the personal grief voiced here — that he came to the Buddhist path only after both parents had already died, too late to offer them this "greater filial piety" himself — gives this entry an unusually autobiographical register rare elsewhere in this collection; the same threefold scheme of worldly filial piety invoked here (material care, worldly honor, moral accomplishment) closely tracks the classical Confucian ranking of filial acts found in the Book of Rites, which Zhuhong deliberately subordinates to a single higher, specifically Buddhist form of filial devotion.
98. 偽造父母恩重經 — On the Forged Sutra of Parents' Profound Kindness
Two well-meaning friends unknowingly print and circulate a forged sutra praising parental kindness — Zhuhong argues that even pious, well-intentioned content does real harm when falsely attributed to the Buddha, since genuine sutras on the same subject already exist and need no forged substitute.
有偽造二經者，題以「父母恩重」等言，中不盡同，而假託古譯師名。吾友二人各刻其一。二友者，忠孝純正士也，見其勸孝，而不察其偽也。或曰：「取其足以勸孝而已，似不必辨其真偽。」予曰：「子但知一利，而不知二害。一利者，誠如子言，勸人行孝，非美事乎？故云一利。二害者何？一者素不信佛人見之，則彌增其謗：『佛言如是鄙俚，他經可知矣！』遂等視大藏甚深無上法寶，重彼愆尤，一害也。二者素信佛人，徒具信心，未曾博覽內典，見此鄙俚之談，亦復起疑，因謂謗佛者未必皆非，動彼惑障，二害也。害多而利少故也。況勸孝自有《大方便報恩經》及《盂蘭盆經》，種種真實佛說者流通世間，奚取於偽造者？」
There exist two forged sutras, each titled with some variation on "Parents' Profound Kindness," differing somewhat from one another in content, both falsely attributed to ancient translators. Two friends of mine each had one of these printed. Both men are genuinely loyal, filial, and upright in character, and seeing that the texts encouraged filial devotion, they never thought to examine whether the texts themselves were authentic.
Someone said to me: "Since these texts are sufficient to encourage filial piety, does it really matter whether they are authentic or not?" I replied: "You recognize only the one benefit, and fail to see the two harms it brings. As for the one benefit — you are certainly right that encouraging people toward filial devotion is a fine thing in itself, and so I grant you that one benefit. But what of the two harms? First, someone who has never believed in the Buddha, upon reading such a crude and vulgar text, will only be confirmed in his slander, saying: 'If this is what the Buddha's own words sound like, one can well imagine what the other sutras must be like!' — and so he comes to regard the entire canon, that profound and supreme treasury of the Dharma, with the same contempt, compounding his own offense. This is the first harm. Second, someone who already believes in the Buddha, but possesses only bare faith without ever having broadly studied the actual Buddhist scriptures, will likewise, upon encountering such a crude text, begin to doubt — concluding that those who slander the Buddha may not always be entirely wrong after all, and so stirring up his own confusion and spiritual obstruction. This is the second harm. The harms, then, clearly outweigh the single benefit. And in any case, genuine sutras encouraging filial piety already exist and freely circulate in the world — the Sutra on the Buddha's Skillful Means in Repaying Kindness and the Ullambana Sutra among them, both authentic teachings of the Buddha himself. What need is there, then, for a forged substitute?"
The apocryphal "Sutra of Parents' Profound Kindness" (父母恩重經) that Zhuhong describes here is a genuine and well-documented case in Chinese Buddhist textual history — several such texts, composed in China rather than translated from Sanskrit despite claiming ancient translator attributions, circulated widely as popular devotional literature throughout the late imperial period precisely because of their emotionally resonant content on filial devotion; both the Sutra on the Buddha's Skillful Means in Repaying Kindness and the Ullambana Sutra that Zhuhong cites as genuine alternatives are indeed authentic, canonically attested scriptures on the theme of repaying parental kindness, making this entry a rare instance in the collection of Zhuhong applying real textual-critical judgment even to material whose moral content he otherwise wholeheartedly endorses, consistent with the same discernment he showed toward the questionable "Chan Instructions" text in this collection's earlier entries.