Record of Places Outside the Tributaries

they truly possessed a sense of devotion. I pondered this, imagining if one had the heavenly eye a Buddhist term for clairvoyance or the ability to see the true nature of all things to look down upon the human world. To see the lonely men and women yearning in spring and grieving in autumn, the fleeting evenings and sudden dawns, the giving of peonies as tokens of love, and the returning of fine jade—would one not see these incidents as identical in their entanglement? I have also contemplated the hosts of the Brahma heaven a high realm in Buddhist cosmology, who have spouses yet do not engage in lewd behavior. It is for this reason that the sages, worthies, immortals, and Buddhas sit with compassion for the foolish and stubborn, not sparing themselves the burden of guiding them with a helping hand. Alas, the desire present in the various heavens is indeed the origin of the resolve to purify the heart and detach from the dust of the world. Does Mencius not speak of holding fast to one’s principles? during the time I shared a study mat with him