Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 34
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). A sobering argument about spiritual decline over time: even the disreputable "Group of Six" monks the Buddha himself rebuked would, Zhuhong argues, count as towering figures of virtue by the degraded standards of the present age — and yet a single line from Mencius holds out hope that genuine greatness can still arise without needing a golden age to produce it.
110. 六群僧 — The Group of Six Monks
A sobering argument about spiritual decline across time: even the disreputable "Group of Six" monks the Buddha himself rebuked would, by the degraded standards of the present age, count as towering figures of virtue — and yet a single line from Mencius holds out hope that genuine greatness can still arise on its own, without needing a golden age to produce it.
六群僧，如來所呵，諸大弟子所不齒者也。而古稱佛世六群，猶賢於佛滅度後馬鳴、龍樹諸菩薩等者，何也？嗟乎！夫子嘗野仲由、攻冉有、小人樊須，具臣由之與求矣，其在今時，則皆卓卓乎，希世之賢守令。振古之良宰輔，蕭曹龔黃、房杜姚宋、韓范富歐之所未必能及者也；而何疑乎六群？故知初五百年、次五百年、次之又次後五百年，解脫以至鬥諍、漸久而漸漓、愈趨而愈下，羽嘉鳳凰庶鳥，非虛語矣，寧不為之三歎？雖然，子輿氏之言曰：「豪傑之士，雖無文王猶興。」果若斯言，則眾生之大幸、大幸也。予日望之。
The Group of Six monks were rebuked directly by the Tathāgata himself, and held in contempt by all the great disciples. And yet it has long been said that even these "Group of Six" monks, living in the Buddha's own lifetime, still surpassed in virtue the bodhisattvas Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna, who lived after the Buddha's own passing — why should this be so?
Ah! Confucius himself once called Zilu "coarse and uncultivated," reproached Ran You outright, and dismissed Fan Xu as "a petty man" — and yet Zilu and Ran Qiu, whom he considered merely adequate officials filling out the ranks, would today, by the standards of our own age, count as towering figures, rare and admirable magistrates the likes of which one seldom finds. Excellent chief ministers throughout history — Xiao He, Cao Can, Gong Sui, Huang Ba; Fang Xuanling, Du Ruhui, Yao Chong, Song Jing; Han Qi, Fan Zhongyan, Fu Bi, Ouyang Xiu — might not even measure up to men Confucius himself once dismissed so lightly. Why, then, should we doubt that the same could be true of the Group of Six?
From this we know that across the first five hundred years after the Buddha's passing, then the next five hundred, and the five hundred after that in turn, the age of liberation gradually gave way to an age of mere contention and strife — genuine practice growing thinner and thinner with each passing period, sinking ever lower the further removed from its source. The old saying that the phoenix descends from Yujia, through the flying dragon, down at last to the ordinary bird, is no empty figure of speech after all — how could one not sigh three times over this? And yet, Mencius himself once said: "A truly outstanding person will rise up even without a King Wen to inspire him." If his words truly hold, then this would be a great and genuine fortune for all sentient beings — one I myself watch for and hope for, day after day.
The "Group of Six" (六群比丘) were a genuine, recurring cast of unruly monks named repeatedly across the Vinaya literature as the occasion for many of the Buddha's own disciplinary rulings — their misbehavior is, ironically, one of the best-documented threads running through the entire monastic code, since so many precepts were established specifically in response to their conduct; Zilu, Ran Qiu (Ran You), and Fan Xu were all genuine, named disciples of Confucius criticized in the Analects for real, specific shortcomings, and the roster of later chief ministers Zhuhong invokes — from the Han dynasty's Xiao He and Cao Can through the Tang's Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui to the Song's Fan Zhongyan and Ouyang Xiu — represents a deliberately comprehensive sweep of Chinese history's most celebrated statesmen, all offered as men who might still fall short of disciples Confucius himself considered merely adequate. Mencius's closing line about "a truly outstanding person rising up even without a King Wen" is drawn directly from the Mengzi itself, and Zhuhong's citation of it here extends the same appeal to individual moral exception that this collection invoked earlier, in its discussion of the "transcendent Confucian" in entry 78 above.