Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 35
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). A Confucian scholar's pointed question about monks who study scripture in comfort while others endure grueling physical labor exposes a real institutional injustice that Zhuhong cannot fully defend, followed by a sweeping meditation treating the entire cycle of birth, death, and rebirth as literally — not merely figuratively — a dream from which only complete awakening can rouse a person.
111. 簡藏鍊磨 — Sutra-Reading Monks and the Discipline of the Training Period
A Confucian scholar's pointed question about monks who study scripture in comfort while receiving regular stipends exposes a real institutional imbalance that Zhuhong cannot fully defend — comparing their easy circumstances against the grueling physical labor and unbroken recitation demanded of monks undergoing formal winter training.
一儒者謂予曰：「吾輩負笈從學，必具束修於師，而助館穀之資於主人。今簡藏僧覽常住經典，無所助於常住，而安坐受供，又每季得嚫金五錢，此何說也？」予笑曰：「公猶未知鍊磨期中事乎？一冬之期，先致米一石於常住，而晝夜鞭逼念佛，無斯須停息，仍每日必負薪，或遠在十餘里之外，打七然後暫免。何不移簡藏之供，而供此苦功辦道之行人乎？時僧顛倒，一至於是，處處皆然，吾亦不知其何說也。」
A Confucian scholar once said to me: "Those of us who travel to study under a teacher must always bring a proper gift to honor our teacher, and contribute toward the cost of our own room and board to our host. Now, the monks who spend their time reading through the monastery's own scriptural collection contribute nothing at all to the monastery's upkeep, and yet sit comfortably receiving its support, even collecting a stipend of five coins of silver each season. How is this to be explained?"
I answered with a laugh: "You are evidently unaware of what actually happens during the winter training period! A monk who wishes to take up residence there for the winter season must first hand over a full measure of rice to the monastery, and then recite the Buddha's name day and night without a single moment's rest, driven on relentlessly; beyond this, he must also gather firewood every single day, sometimes traveling more than ten li to do so, with only the period of an intensive seven-day retreat offering him any temporary relief. Why, then, does the monastery not redirect the funds spent supporting these leisured sutra-readers toward supporting these practitioners undergoing such genuinely hard labor in pursuit of the Way instead? That present-day monastic life has become so thoroughly inverted, and that this same pattern repeats itself everywhere one looks — this, too, I confess I do not know how to account for."
The winter training period (鍊磨期, roughly the seventh lunar month through the following spring) was a genuine, standard feature of late-imperial Chinese monastic life, during which resident monks committed to sustained group recitation, manual labor such as firewood-gathering, and periodic intensive retreats — Zhuhong's account of the physical rigor involved is consistent with descriptions of monastic discipline found elsewhere in his own writings; this entry is notable for Zhuhong offering no real defense of the imbalance the Confucian scholar identifies, instead simply confirming that scripture-reading monks' comparative ease at the expense of laboring monks was a genuine, widespread institutional problem he witnessed "everywhere one looks," extending the same unflinching self-criticism of his own tradition already seen in this collection's exchanges with the Daoist critic in entries 93 and 94.
112. 世夢 — The World as a Dream
A sweeping meditation arguing that the entire cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is not merely comparable to a dream but literally is one — a single continuous dream stretching across countless lifetimes, from which only complete awakening, not mere sleep and waking within it, can ever truly rouse a person.
古云：「處世若大夢。」經云：「卻來觀世間，猶如夢中事。」云「若」云「如」者，不得已而喻言之也。究極而言，則真夢也，非喻也。人生自少而壯，自壯而老，自老而死，俄而入一胞胎也，俄而出一胞胎也，俄而又入又出之無窮已也。而生不知來，死不知去，蒙蒙然、冥冥然，千生萬劫而不自知也。俄而沈地獄，俄而為鬼為畜，為人為天，升而沈，沈而升，皇皇然、忙忙然，千生萬劫而不自知也。非真夢乎？古詩云：「枕上片時春夢中，行盡江南數千里。」今被利名牽，往返於萬里者，豈必枕上為然也。故知莊生夢蝴蝶，其未夢蝴蝶時亦夢也；夫子夢周公，其未夢周公時亦夢也。曠大劫來，無一時一刻而不在夢中也。破盡無明，朗然大覺，曰：「天上天下，惟吾獨尊！」夫是之謂夢醒漢。
The ancients said: "Living in the world is like a great dream." The sutras say: "Look back upon the world, and it is exactly like the events of a dream." When such statements use the words "like" or "exactly like," this is merely an unavoidable figure of speech. But taken to its ultimate conclusion, it is not a figure of speech at all — it is a literal, genuine dream. A person's life proceeds from childhood to maturity, from maturity to old age, from old age to death; and then, in an instant, one enters a new womb, and in another instant emerges from it, entering and emerging again and again without end.
And yet a person does not know where he came from at birth, nor where he goes at death — hazy and unaware, passing through countless lifetimes across countless eons without ever knowing himself at all. In an instant one sinks into hell; in another instant one becomes a hungry ghost or an animal, a human being or a heavenly being — rising and sinking, sinking and rising, restless and hurried, passing through countless lifetimes across countless eons without ever knowing himself at all. Is this not truly a dream? An ancient poem says: "In the brief span of a spring dream upon one's own pillow, one travels the length of the southern lands, several thousand li." People today, dragged along by fame and profit, travel back and forth across ten thousand li in pursuit of them — how could this be any different from what happens upon a pillow?
From this we know: Zhuangzi's dream of becoming a butterfly was indeed a dream, but the time before he dreamed of the butterfly was equally a dream; Confucius's dream of the Duke of Zhou was indeed a dream, but the time before he dreamed of the Duke of Zhou was equally a dream. Across vast, immeasurable eons, there has never been a single moment, not even an instant, that was not itself part of this same dream. Only when ignorance is utterly shattered, and one awakens into clear and brilliant realization, can one say, as the Buddha himself once did: "Above the heavens and below them, I alone am the honored one!" Only such a person may truly be called one who has awakened from the dream.
The opening line "living in the world is like a great dream" is drawn from a genuine poem by the Tang poet Li Bai, and the verse Zhuhong cites from the sutras is drawn from the Śūraṅgama Sutra, already a recurring textual touchstone throughout this collection; Zhuangzi's celebrated butterfly dream, from the "Discussion on Making All Things Equal" chapter of the Zhuangzi, and Confucius's own remark in the Analects lamenting that he no longer dreamed of the Duke of Zhou, are both genuine classical touchstones that Zhuhong deliberately combines here — reading a Daoist parable about the fluidity of waking and dreaming identity alongside a Confucian lament about lost inspiration as equally instances of the same all-encompassing dream, a synthesis of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist material characteristic of his broader approach throughout this collection.