This shows that Master's "benevolence" is beyond the general realm of opposition between good and evil.
Master Huineng, the sixth ancestor, said: "If outsiders say that they cannot be born or destroyed, they will not be born. If they are born, they will be destroyed. If they are destroyed, they will say that they will not be born. I said that those who are immortal are born today and will not die today, so they are different from outsiders. If you want to know your heart, but don't think about all the good and evil, you will naturally enter a clean heart. Zhan Ran is often silent, and you can skillfully use Hengsha. "
It can be seen that Confucius is a great bodhisattva, and there is no good or evil in the air.
The Pure Inaction of Taoism —— Real Inaction
Legend has it that when Lao Zi rode a green ox to Hanguguan and left a 5,000-word Tao Te Ching for the prefect in Hanguguan, a handsome old man who was over 100 years old came to the mansion to look for him. The old man gave a simple salute to old A Zi and said, "I heard that your husband is knowledgeable and versatile, and I would like to ask you." Then, the old man proudly said, "I am 106 years old this year. To tell the truth, I have wasted my life since I was a child. People my age are dead. They cultivated 100 acre of fertile land, but there was no place. They built the Great Wall of Wan Li without eaves. They built four houses, but in the end they all became a lonely grave on the edge of the wilderness. As for me, although I have been poor all my life, I still eat whole grains; Although I didn't put a brick or tile, I still lived in a shelter from the wind and rain. Sir, can I laugh at them for being busy all their lives, just to let themselves die early? " In mr. yi's view, am I a living person who enjoys more happiness than them? When I heard this, I smiled and said to the prefect, "Please find a brick and a stone." Laozi put bricks and stones in front of the old man and said, "Xianweng, if you can only choose one, do you want bricks or stones?" The old man proudly picked up the brick and put it in front of him and said, "Of course I choose the brick." "Lao tze asked the old man with a smile," why? "? The old man pointed to the stone and said, "This stone is not dull and has no edges and corners. What's the use of taking it "? Need bricks. Lao Tzu greeted the onlookers and asked, "Do you want stones or bricks?" Everyone says they want bricks instead of stones. Lao Tzu turned to the old man and asked him, "Do stones and bricks have a long life?" The old man said, "Of course it's a stone." Lao Tzu smiled with relief and said, "Stone has a long life, and people don't choose it. Bricks have a short life, but people choose them. It's just useful and useless. Everything in the world is like this. Although life is short, it is beneficial to people in the sky, and everyone chooses and reads it, short but not short; Although life is long, people are useless to heaven, and both heaven and man abandon it and forget it. Long and short. " The old man suddenly felt ashamed.
For the true face of Taoism, please refer to Zeng Guofan's Great Consciousness: ... I have experienced many successes and failures in the real people's army these days, and finally discovered the mystery of this Taoist classic through careful taste and slow chewing. This seemingly unexpected book is actually about the truth of China's entry into WTO. It's just that Confucius and Mencius are direct, while Laozi advocates using circuitous ways to achieve their goals; Shen Hanchong still insists on coercion, while Laozi thinks that "softness wins, weakness wins" and "the world is the softest and the world is the strongest". "The river is the king of hundreds of valleys, which is good for it." How profound this sentence is! Laozi is really a great wise man, who has figured out the competitive art in the world the most profoundly.
Zeng Guofan thought of the feud with green camp in Changsha, the feud with Hunan officialdom, and the struggle with Chen Heyun in Nanchang. All this was done in the direct way of Confucianism and Legalism. And the result? On the surface, it is a win, but in fact it has buried a bigger hidden danger. Another example is the participation of Qing De and Chen, who intervened in various affairs. When dealing with it, although I was happy, I didn't expect it to be sharp-edged, too strong, hurting Qing De and Chen's up and down, and invisibly setting up many obstacles for myself. These hidden dangers and obstacles, if not personally experienced, are unimaginable in the study room and the six-sign room, and the harm to the cause greatly exceeds the temporary scenery and pleasure! Since direct, strong-to-strong tactics sometimes don't work, and indirect, weak-to-strong methods can also achieve the goal, defeating the strong without leaving hidden dangers, why not adopt them? When I was a teenager, I remembered such words as "generous without horns", "loud and sparse", "elephant invisible" and "clumsy and clumsy", and now they suddenly became clear. Over the years, the struggle with officialdom and green camp is actually a kind of wrestling, which is sound and tangible, seemingly skillful, but actually clumsy. True generosity, elephants and Da Qiao are not like this. It should be completely invisible and unnecessary. ..... Strange to say, now that he has experienced the storm, Zeng Guofan will read Zhuangzi again, and he has a lot of * * * voices for this unprecedented masterpiece. Even, he realized that Zhuangzi and Confucius were not diametrically opposed, and they could and should complement each other when they joined the WTO. In this way, we can not only make a heroic career, but also maintain a calm and modest mentality. ...
The real inaction is "inaction without doing anything, inaction without doing anything". The Diamond Sutra says: "Buddha tells Bodhi: Bodhisattvas should surrender their hearts in this way: all sentient beings and the like, I will enter nirvana and destroy them. If so, there are countless beings, and no one can destroy them. " This is the real inaction! On the surface, I do it enthusiastically, but nothing happens in my heart. Inaction is not passive escape from the world and inaction; This is not just following the laws of nature, but moving from time to time. Confucius, a sage, also "did something wrong", seemingly "promising". This is really a misinterpretation of the original intention of the saint. The Diamond Sutra also mentions that "all saints and sages do nothing but differ." Although saints have different degrees of sanctification, they all forget things and forget themselves, and they are not humiliated, that is, as the Diamond Sutra says, "There is no life without me, no man and no sentient beings." In my opinion, Jesus is also a bodhisattva. Although it is different from us, it is also an accidental teaching. It is a saying (with the roots of westerners: at that time, the west could not accept a higher level of environment and civilization), that is, "what should be known with the heart of all beings"; Finally, take the initiative to sacrifice oneself for righteousness and atone for all beings. It seems that Jesus Christ is also a saint who broke the "binary opposition" because he knows that all beings are one, otherwise he will not give up his body; If all beings are not one, how can all beings benefit from Jesus' atonement? Therefore, the fundamental criterion for judging the inaction of real saints is "heart"!
During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, there was a Feng Dao, who broke the official record in China's history because he was born in four dynasties and served as emperor in six dynasties, and was called the "tumbler" in officialdom by later generations.
Nan Shihuai commented on Feng Dao:
"But there is no evil in teaching, and it also stands among wolves and tigers."
During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, there was a Feng Dao, who broke the official record in China's history because he was born in four dynasties and served as emperor in six dynasties, and was called the "tumbler" in officialdom by later generations. Nan Shihuai wants to evaluate Feng Dao: He has three principles: don't bully people if you want to bully the ground, don't bully others in the middle, and don't bully people if you want to bully the sky. He takes three principles as his basic principles. So cheap, so expensive, so long, so old ... Special statement, this person should not imitate casually. Now it's just academic and objective research. (Buddhists talk about the realm of the Great Bodhisattva, which can only be incarnated with the class and unchanged with the fate. )
Ouyang Xiu in the Song Dynasty said that the integrity of the scholar was ruined by him, and milk was a mother! It is not surprising that it can gain a foothold in the political storm in times of peace and prosperity. However, in such a chaotic period of more than 80 years, it is really not easy for him to stick it out. First, this person is at least not corrupt, so people can't attack him; And other aspects of personality and behavior are impeccable. Self-proclaimed "Changle old man", only two people in history dare to brag like this. One of the emperors-Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty-called himself "the old man in Shiquan".
To sum up, what is attacked is nothing more than wealth and sex, and Feng Dao probably has neither. He is honest, pure and has no hobbies. He really studies Buddhism. Even his son bought a live fish. He called his son as soon as he saw it. It's too hard to be such a person in troubled times.
In the chaos of the Five Dynasties and 80 years, he made indelible contributions to the preservation of culture and the vitality of the country. In order to take care of the overall situation, he was accused of infidelity for a long time. Judging from his works, his idea at that time was: Who should I be loyal to? These guys are foreigners. When they come to China, they will become emperors. Do you want to be loyal to them? That won't do! I'm from China! So he said, "The wolf and the tiger stand among themselves". He regarded the five emperors not as emperors, but as tigers and wolves. Looking at his life again, we can say that he is honest, earnest and upright, and his measurement is of course generous. He can tolerate and influence the enemy. To tell the truth, future generations can't learn Feng Dao, because without his education and integrity. Seeing that he can tolerate and influence the enemy, it can be seen that he has hardly lost his temper.
Later, Su Dongpo and Wang Anshi praised him. Su Dongpo talked about Feng Dao: "Bodhisattva, come again." Wang Anshi talked about Feng Dao, who was a "Buddhist man". Said he was a living Buddha. Finding a historical person, namely Feng Dao, is really the secret of Zhuangzi.
Confucius' way is "consistent", and people at that time could not understand its meaning, which would affect future generations! Meng Ziyun: If you are a husband, you don't have to believe what you say, but what you do doesn't have to be fruitful. Yue Fei said that "the beauty of management lies in one heart", which is really a witness. At the age of 20, Master Hu Yi, the ninth ancestor of Pure Land Sect, was puzzled by Confucius' statement that "self-denial in one day makes the world return to benevolence" in order to interpret the chapter "Yan Yuan asks benevolence" in The Analects of Yan Yuan. Sophora flavescens studied hard for three days and nights, forgetting to eat and sleep, and suddenly realized Confucius' mind. After this period of verification, Yan Zu suddenly penetrated two doubts: first, what the sage proved was nothing more than this heart; Both, the orthodox inheritance, can only be passed down by witnesses, not from generation to generation. The master really understands the Confucian method, just like Yang Ming. ) Yanzu opens the door for Ye Tianqi:
Although the three generations of Tang Yu have gone, our hearts have never gone. There were Confucius in the Spring and Autumn Period, Wang Tong at the end of the Six Dynasties, Lu Xiangshan in the Song Dynasty and Wang Wencheng in the Ming Dynasty. Later scholars, if contracted to the source of mind, said that Yao and Shun Kong Yan were not dead, but Yao and Shun Kong Yan could not reach the heart.
Although Yao and Shun saints have existed for a long time, everyone's inherent nature has not disappeared. In the Spring and Autumn Period, the realm proved by Confucius and Yan Yuan was no different from that of Yao and Shun. Wang Tong in the Six Dynasties, Lu Xiangshan in the Song Dynasty and Wang Yangming in the Ming Dynasty also proved the realm of saints. Therefore, no matter what age you were born in, as long as the evidence is in your mind, there can be saints like Yao, Shun, Confucius and Yan Yuan.
Only after Zhizu realized the mental methods of Confucius and Yan did he know that "Daoism" was not in the history and was not passed down from generation to generation. It all depends on whether his certificate meets the heart of a saint. Yan Zu believes that today, two thousand years later, Wang Yangming is a descendant of Kong Yan. He said in "Giving a Stone to Cover the Pass, Courtesy to Cover the Pass, Confession to Take the Wheel": "In modern times, only Mr. Yang Ming taught Confucius and Yan Xinfa." When Li introduced the layman, he pointed out more clearly:
Gu Shengxue is dead, but there are immortal people. Those who suffer from benevolence regard it as benevolence, and the wise regard it as wisdom. People use it every day but don't know its ears. After two thousand years' hard work, Wang Yangming lived in a foreign country for three years, and realized his conscience, washed away the bad habits of Confucianism in Han and Song Dynasties, and directly spread the knowledge of Confucius and Yan.
Everyone has his own nature and everyone is equal. The benevolent sees this heart and calls it benevolence. A wise man sees this heart and is called wisdom. However, ordinary people are aware of it every day, but they are not aware of its existence. Yangming was demoted to Longchang, Guizhou Province, and suddenly realized that "to conscience" is the true way of being a saint. He taught people that "as long as I don't bully him (conscience), I will do whatever he wants me to do, and what goes around comes around, how safe and happy he is here"! This practical achievement of the unity of knowledge and practice has swept away the bad habit of guessing the realm of saints only by "the private meaning of words" since the Han and Song Dynasties. Mr. Yangming, who realized Confucius' mind method, is the successor of Confucius.
In the end, "there are thousands of kinds of practice, and there is no other way to return to the yuan". Without this one, it is just a "heart".
Laozi said: I have three treasures, which I hold and protect. One is kindness, the other is thrift, and the third is not daring to be the first in the world.
Kindness is universal; Thrift is indifference, no desire and no desire, and a pure heart; I dare not do anything for the world first, because I realize that the whole legal world is a selfless spirit. If you are enlightened, you will "not compete with all beings" and be content to lag behind others.
Laozi's three treasures are exactly what Buddhists say: charity ("kindness"), solemn kindness ("frugality"), not seeking happiness for oneself, and wishing all beings to avoid suffering ("dare not be the first in the world").