Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 33
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). Zhuhong measures the legendary trials of the immortal Lü Dongbin against the far more extreme sacrifices recorded in the Buddha's own past-life stories — servitude, self-mutilation, a body offered to a hawk — concluding that even the great disciple Śāriputra once faltered under such a test, and asking whether ordinary practitioners might still take inspiration from standards they can never hope to fully meet.
109. 勘試 — Trials of Testing
Zhuhong measures the legendary trials the immortal Lü Dongbin underwent before receiving the Daoist path against the far more extreme sacrifices recorded in the Buddha's own past-life stories — servitude, self-mutilation, a body offered to a hawk — concluding that even the great disciple Śāriputra once faltered under such a test, and asking whether ordinary practitioners might still take inspiration from a standard they can never hope to fully meet.
世傳鍾離真人之於洞賓也，十試而後授以仙道。略記數事：初試以財，次試以色，次試以身命；然此猶世間實行者所能為也。又一真人，需才鍊藥，屢現變異，確乎堅持，至嬰兒墮地而失聲以敗；然此猶世間忘情者所能為也。乃世尊昔為菩薩，婆羅門乞其夫婦二人以為奴僕，時世尊身為太子，即與其妃，男入男群，女入女群，效忠竭力，備諸苦辛，勞而不怨。又或割身肉以償鷹，剜千燈以求法，則非惟世間所難，而亦非初心菩薩所及矣！是故舍利弗逢乞眼者而退大就小，菩薩道之難成如此。今日當洞賓之試，已十有五雙打退，而況為奴僕乎！而況割肉、剜眼諸苦行乎！嗚呼！此雖得忍大士境界，非下凡可企，然獨不可以是激勵其凡心乎？
It is popularly said that when the immortal Zhongli Quan sought to instruct Lü Dongbin, he first tested him ten times before finally granting him the Daoist path. Let me briefly recount a few of these tests: first he tested him with wealth, then with sensual temptation, then with a threat to his very life — and yet even these are things an ordinary, genuinely committed practitioner in this world could conceivably manage. There is also the story of another immortal, seeking the ingredients needed to refine his elixir, who repeatedly encountered strange illusory visions and held firm against every one of them, only to fail at the very last moment when, within one such vision, his own infant child fell to the ground, and he could not stop himself from crying out — and yet even this is something a person in this world who has genuinely detached from ordinary emotion could conceivably manage.
But consider instead the World-Honored One, who, in a past life as a bodhisattva, was approached by a brahmin who asked to take both himself and his own wife as slaves. At that time the World-Honored One was living as a crown prince, and yet he and his consort both agreed at once, the prince joining the ranks of male servants and the princess joining the ranks of female servants, serving with complete devotion and utmost effort, enduring every hardship without a single word of complaint. On another occasion, he cut flesh from his own body to ransom a dove from a hawk that pursued it; on yet another occasion, he carved a thousand lamp-wicks into his own flesh in order to receive a single teaching. These are not merely things beyond what any ordinary person in this world could accomplish — they exceed even what a bodhisattva who has only just begun the path could hope to achieve! This is precisely why Śāriputra himself, upon once encountering a beggar who asked for his own eye, retreated from the greater path of the bodhisattva back to the lesser path — so difficult is the bodhisattva path truly to accomplish.
If people today were subjected to the same trials Lü Dongbin faced, some five out of every ten would already have turned back and fled — how much more so, then, if asked to become a slave! How much more so, if asked to cut one's own flesh or carve out one's own eye in such acts of extreme ascetic practice! Ah! Though this is truly the realm of a great bodhisattva who has attained the patient acceptance of ultimate truth, and not something an ordinary, lowly person could ever hope to reach — could it not, all the same, still serve to inspire and spur on the ordinary heart?
Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin are both genuine figures within the "Eight Immortals" of popular Daoist tradition, and the ten trials Zhongli is said to have set for Lü before granting him the Daoist path form a well-known cycle of religious folklore independent of this passage; the Buddhist jātaka tales Zhuhong cites in deliberate contrast — the prince and princess who willingly became slaves, the king who ransomed a dove with his own flesh (the story of King Śibi), and the king who carved a thousand lamp-wicks into his own body to receive a single teaching — are each genuine, canonically attested past-life stories of the Buddha found across multiple sutras, including the Sutra of the Differences in Karmic Retribution already cited elsewhere in this collection; the account of Śāriputra retreating from the bodhisattva path after a beggar's request for his own eye is likewise drawn from the historical Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, and stands as one of Buddhist literature's most striking admissions that even a great disciple's compassion has its limits.