འཕགས་པ་ཆས་ཀྱ་ཕྱག་རྒྱ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.3

intro.3

Seven hundred monks attain liberation after hearing this teaching, but the controversy over its approach to renunciation and ordination leads a group of one hundred advanced monks to stand up and leave, while an even smaller group of five monks completely reject this teaching and fall into the hell realms. The Buddha takes this opportunity to point out that this understanding of “going forth” (rab tu byung ba, pravrajita) may be considered something that the entire world finds disagreeable, but it is nevertheless true. He explains that since ordinary, worldly beings are ultimately nonexistent, one should not object to this teaching simply because the entire world finds it unacceptable. The doctrine of emptiness is thus applied to the “realm of beings” (sems can gyi khams, sattvadhātu) in exactly the same way that it is applied to the “realm of phenomena” (chos kyi dbyings, dharmadhātu) to discourage any tendency toward rejecting the doctrine of emptiness simply because it does not accord with the way things appear for ordinary beings.