Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 29
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). A gentle correction of a monk's well-meaning but misguided habit of counting recitations with fresh beans instead of a proper rosary, followed by a sharp piece of textual criticism rejecting a Daoist text's claim that the tyrant Cao Cao was somehow enshrined among the celestial gods.
103. 念荳佛 — The "Bean-Counting Buddha-Recitation" Monk
A gentle but pointed correction of a well-meaning but misguided fundraising gimmick — a monk who counted his own recitations with donated beans rather than a proper rosary — with Zhuhong carefully distinguishing this modern practice from a superficially similar classical precedent it was mistakenly cited to justify.
僧有募化施主黃荳，每念佛一聲，過荳一粒。一人作之，餘人效之，號為「荳兒佛師父」。夫世尊教人念佛，制為數珠，何乃不遵佛制，省力事不作，而作此喫力事也？且百八之珠，週則復始，乃至百千萬億而無盡；今一合之荳，週則復始，亦復無盡，而何為念過之荳置不再用，更換新者？其言曰：「念之至斗、至石，送諸庵寺作腐供眾。」亦迂矣！或曰：「古之人有行之者，如《往生集》所載是也。」曰：彼非數荳，傍人計其念佛多不可計，約之當盈兩載。今糧舶大者，載米千石，兩載則極言其多耳，非數荳如今人也。即實數荳，其心亦不如今人也。
There was a monk who solicited yellow soybeans from donors, moving one bean aside for every recitation of the Buddha's name. One person began this practice, and others soon imitated him, until he came to be known as "the Bean-Counting Buddha-Recitation Master."
But when the World-Honored One himself taught people to recite the Buddha's name, he established the counting rosary for this very purpose — why, then, disregard the Buddha's own established practice, setting aside the effortless method in favor of this laborious one instead? Consider, too, that a string of one hundred and eight beads can simply be cycled through again and again, counting up to a hundred thousand million recitations without limit; a measure of soybeans could likewise be cycled through again and again without limit — so why, then, set aside each bean once counted and never use it again, always switching to fresh ones instead? The monk's own explanation was: "Once I have counted a full peck or a full bushel of beans, I send them to various temples to be made into tofu for the community's use." This too is a needlessly roundabout way of doing things!
Someone said: "The ancients themselves practiced exactly this, as recorded in the Accounts of Rebirth." I answered: that earlier case was not actually counting beans in this sense at all — it was simply that observers, unable to keep track of how many times this person recited the Buddha's name, estimated the total by comparison to beans and arrived at a figure equivalent to two full shiploads. The large grain ships of today can carry a thousand bushels of rice each — "two shiploads" was merely a vivid way of expressing an enormous quantity, not a description of someone literally counting individual beans the way people do today. And even if that ancient practitioner really had counted beans quite literally, his own sincerity of mind would still have far surpassed that of people doing the same thing today.
The Accounts of Rebirth (往生集) cited here as a supposed precedent is a genuine work compiled by Zhuhong himself, collecting biographies of historical figures believed to have achieved rebirth in the Pure Land — making this entry an unusual instance of Zhuhong correcting a misreading of his own earlier compilation, carefully distinguishing an ancient devotee's practice, remembered only in vivid approximate terms by onlookers, from a modern literalist imitation that missed the spirit of the original story entirely; the same insistence on sincerity of mind over mechanical technique that closes this entry directly continues the argument of the immediately preceding entry's discussion of the phrase "utterly sincere" in the context of Buddha-recitation.
104. 真誥 — The Zhen'gao
A sharp piece of textual criticism rejecting a major Daoist scripture's claim that the tyrant and warlord Cao Cao was somehow enshrined among the celestial gods alongside the sage-kings of antiquity — Zhuhong arguing that such a claim, if taken seriously, would undermine the entire moral function of belief in cosmic justice.
《真誥》一書，他且弗論，如曹操者，乃與古聖君如堯、舜、禹、湯者，同列而為天神，吾不能無疑也。或曰：「閻羅王俄登寶殿，則侍衛森嚴；俄吞鐵丸，則肢體焦爛。安知操之不朝在天堂而晚在地獄也？」是不然，閻王者，其在生亦修福亦造罪，故報如是。操之為人，有惡無善，何得罪福雙報如閻王乎？或更有說：「非愚所知，據理評之。」若果如斯，胡以寒亂臣賊子之膽，示老猾巨奸之警乎？亦盡信書不如無書之類也已。
Setting aside every other matter concerning the Daoist text Zhen'gao, there is one claim I cannot help but doubt: that a figure like Cao Cao is listed there as a celestial deity, ranked alongside the ancient sage-kings Yao, Shun, Yu, and Tang. Someone said to me: "King Yama himself is, at one moment, seated in splendor upon his jeweled throne surrounded by an imposing retinue, and at the next moment forced to swallow a red-hot iron ball, his limbs scorched and blistered — how do we know that Cao Cao is not, likewise, in paradise each morning and in hell each evening?" But this is not so. King Yama's own condition arises because, during his own lifetime, he both cultivated merit and committed transgressions, and so his karmic reward reflects both in alternation. Cao Cao's own character, by contrast, was pure wickedness with no trace of virtue at all — how, then, could he possibly receive the same mixed reward of sin and merit that King Yama receives?
Someone offered a further explanation: "This is not something a person of ordinary understanding could know — one can only reason about it in principle." But if that is truly the case, then by what means could such teachings ever strike fear into the hearts of treacherous ministers and rebellious subjects, or serve as a warning to cunning and deeply corrupt schemers? This too belongs to the same category as the saying: "Better to have no book at all than to believe everything written in it."
The Zhen'gao is a genuine and historically significant Daoist scripture compiled by the Liang-dynasty scholar Tao Hongjing, presenting itself as the transcribed revelations of celestial perfected beings to earlier Daoist visionaries, and its inclusion of the historical warlord Cao Cao — whose ruthless, ambition-driven career made him a byword for treachery in later Chinese moral and literary tradition — among its celestial ranks was a genuinely controversial claim even among traditional readers; Zhuhong's closing citation of "better to have no book than to believe everything in it" directly repeats the same line he used to dismiss the questionable vow-text and Chan manual discussed earlier in this collection's entries 83 and 89, applying the identical standard of textual skepticism across both Buddhist and Daoist source material alike.