འཕགས་པ་ཀན་རྫབ་དང་དན་དམ་པའ་བདན་པ་བསྟན་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད 2.9

2.9

The god said, “Mañjuśrī, is there a method by which a bodhisattva great being who has no knowledge can come to possess great knowledge?”

Mañjuśrī said, “Divine son, there is. And why? Divine son, ultimately all phenomena are discerned by knowledge. However, when one searches for phenomena, they disappear and cannot be observed. Knowledge is also like that; ultimately it also does not exist and cannot be observed. Therefore, relatively, one speaks of ‘possessing knowledge,’ even though that knowledge is ultimately utterly unborn. Divine son, according to that method, a bodhisattva great being who has no knowledge is called one who possesses great knowledge, or one who possesses especially exalted knowledge, or one who possesses sacred knowledge, or one who lays hold of knowledge, or one who possesses knowledge devoid of a focus. Ultimately, things are not as they are described.”

The Blessed One now addressed Mañjuśrī Kumārabhūta. “Excellent!” he said. “Excellent, excellent! Mañjuśrī, you have spoken well and explained, without explaining, the acts and non-acts of bodhisattva great beings. Mañjuśrī, for a starving person, feeble and thin, it is better to suffer, and thus not to unknowingly eat poisonous food. In the same way, Mañjuśrī, it is better for bodhisattva great beings to engage in nonconceptual miserliness, bad behavior, ill will, laziness, forgetfulness, and lack of knowledge, and thus not engage in the conceptual applications of generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, concentration, and knowledge of the hearers and solitary buddhas who rely on reference points. Why? Because the latter give rise to the faults of poisonous reference points, and this must therefore be understood to be a danger on the relative level.”

At this point the god Excellent Rule