Nature and Principle in Islam

1. 卷首・本經The Root Classic

   Chapter 4 · What body, heart, nature and mandate hold in the microcosm

   第四章　分述小世界身心性命所藏之用

   Without nature there is no heart; without heart there is no nature. When heart and nature meet, the whole of virtue shines. [Daoxing tuiyuan jing] The heart contains seven virtues and becomes spiritual clarity: compliance in the heart's envelope, faith on its surface, kindness within it, discernment in the spirit, sincerity in the humane, the hidden brought forth in its mystery, and the Real appearing in the first heart. The first heart manifests its function, answering wondrously without limit: the whole substance and the great function, nothing left hidden. [Daoxing tuiyuan jing] From the Former Heaven it comes down; in the Latter Heaven it rises again. It comes from this heart and returns to this heart. [Daoxing tuiyuan jing; Yanzhen jing] The two arcs meet at their boundary and fill out the circle again. [Commentary on the Real Classic; Feiyin jing] The human is like a lamp; the Real light is its fire. Without the Real light, it is a lamp and nothing more. [Commentary on the Real Classic; Yanzhen jing; Daoxing tuiyuan jing] The Human Ultimate is the great whole, lacking no beauty: beautiful in form, and beautiful again in its mystery. [Daoxing tuiyuan jing; Yanzhen jing] The Root Suchness flows, threading together the coarse and the fine. From the Real coming to me: creation does it. From me going back to the Real: human doing does it. [Feiyin jing] Taking what each has, seek what all share; blend and fuse them into one, and roll up their traces and guises. [same] Only the sage walks this ground in fact. For the many it is hard: they take darkness upon themselves, fall into doubt and opposition, and only bring on ruin. [Daoxing tuiyuan jing] Sages, worthies, the wise and the foolish are divided here; the lost, the heretical, the treacherous and the perverse are told apart from here. [same] The sage's whole substance has neither light nor dark. The worthy has a lack, dark to the Root Suchness; the wise are dark to nature; the foolish, dark to the heart. Dark in this, veiled in that, the Root Suchness is not seen. [same] The worthy are veiled by the self, the wise by knowledge, the foolish by desire. Veils are shallow, obstacles deep; the Root Suchness does not get through. [same] To believe the principle and doubt the practice is heresy. To believe the practice and doubt the principle is doubleness. When doubt and belief mix within, lost and without direction, that is delusion. [Commentary on the Real Classic] The heart complies and the body resists: that is negligence. The body complies and the heart resists: that is hypocrisy. Heart and body both resist: that is perversity. [same] Doubt is the gradual drawing away; resistance, its depth. [same] Sunk in things and self, one is cut off from the Root Suchness. [Daoxing tuiyuan jing; Feiyin jing] Only by following the sage's work, cultivating the body by the rites, clarifying the heart by the Way, fulfilling one's nature and returning to one's mandate, does the whole substance return to the Real. The Root Suchness alone is clear, the great function wholly bright: this is called the Human Ultimate, and so one returns to the first heart. [Daoxing tuiyuan jing]

   非性無心，非心無性。心性會合，全德昭焉。〔道行推原經〕心含七德，作是靈明。順於心包，信於其表，惠於其裏，明識在靈，篤真在仁，發隱其妙，真現初心。初心著用，妙應無方。全體大用，莫或遺藏。〔道行推原經〕先天來降，後天復升。來自此心，復於此心。〔道行推原經〕〔研真經〕兩弧界合，復滿圓形。〔真經注〕〔費隱經〕人若燈具，真光其火。不獲真光，徒為人具。〔真經注〕〔研真經〕〔道行推原經〕人極大全，無美不備。既美其形，復美其妙。〔道行推原經〕〔研真經〕本然流行，貫合粗精。自真來我，造化為之。自我復真，人為為之。〔費隱經〕本其各具，尋其公共。渾融沕合，卷其跡相。〔同上〕惟是聖人，實踐其境。衆則難之，自取暗昧，陷於疑逆，徒致潰累。〔道行推原經〕聖賢智愚，由是而分。迷異奸邪，從此以判。〔同上〕聖人全體，本無明暗。賢則有虧，暗於本然。智暗於性，愚暗於心。暗此蔽彼，本然弗見。〔同上〕賢障於己，智障於知，愚障於欲。障淺礙深，本然弗通。〔同上〕信理疑事，則為異端。信事疑理，則為疑貳。疑信交衷，倀倀無之，則為迷惑。〔真經注〕心順身逆，是為疏忽。身順心逆，是為奸佞。心身皆逆，是為邪逆。〔同上〕疑離之漸，逆悖之深。〔同上〕沉淪物我，本然隔絕。〔道行推原經〕〔費隱經〕惟法聖功，修身以禮，明心以道，盡性復命，全體歸真。本然獨湛，大用全明，是謂人極，乃復初心。〔道行推原經〕

   ✦AI

   Scan, p. 126–129Transcribed from the scan by AI (Claude), checked as described on the About page. Share

Chinese: transcribed by AI (Claude) from the CADAL scans on Wikimedia Commons (public domain), checked against the zh.wikisource text (CC BY-SA); Books 1–5 also collated with the 1923 photoreprint (CADAL, Commons), and the Root Classic with the Chinese printed in Murata, Chittick and Tu (2009); punctuation is editorial. Books 1–5 keep the notes of Hei of Qingyuan (清源黑氏, Hei Mingfeng), a later commentator, apart from Liu Zhi's text. Arabic: Nūr al-Ḥaqq (Ma Lianyuan), al-Laṭāʾif, as printed in Murata, Chittick and Tu, The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi (2009), pp. 103–153 (public domain text; taken from the book's text layer and checked against the page images by AI, page by page; not yet proofread by a person). Characters: Unihan (Unicode licence), cjk-decomp (Apache-2.0), the Kangxi Dictionary (public domain) via Wikisource (CC BY-SA). The English and the term mappings marked AI were written by AI (Claude). Murata's translations are in copyright and are cited, never reproduced. How this text was established.