Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 1663

106
FO-SHO-HING-TSAN-KING.
II, 9.
age, disease, and death, these sorrows, who can escape by strategy 1? (contrivance, upaya). 744
'If you say, “Water can put out fire,” or “ Fire can cause water to boil and pass away," (then this proves only that) distinctive natures may be mutually destructive; but nature in harmony produces living things; 745
'So man when first conceived within the womb, his hands, his feet, and all his separate members, his spirit and his understanding, of themselves are perfected; but who is he who does it? 746
Who is he that points the prickly thorn ? This too is nature, self-controlling 2. And take again the different kinds of beasts, these are what they are, without desire (on their part); 747
'And so, again, the heaven-born beings, whom the self-existent (Isvara) rules“, and all the world of his creation; these have no self-possessed power of expedients; 748
For if they had a means of causing birth, there would be also means) for controlling death, and then what need of self-contrivance, or seeking for deliverance ? 749
There are those who say, “It” (the soul) is the cause of birth, and others who affirm, “I” (the soul) is the cause of death. There are some who say,
1 The word translated strategy' is of very frequent occurrence. It means contrivance, use of means to an end.
? Tsz'in, of itself.'
* This line seems to mean that these beasts are made, or come into being, without desire on their part.
I have supposed that the symbol in the text is for , but the first symbol may be retained, and then the passage would mean whom the self-existent made.
The word 'I' here seems to mean 'the self,' or, the soul.
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