分別功德論 5.3

5.3

As for why the monk Bāpa is declared foremost in dispelling people’s doubts and hesitations: All the Buddhas of the three times share eighty-four thousand practices as the Dharma to be practiced, but sentient beings need not traverse all practices to attain the Way; they take as fundamental wherever their awakening occurs. Why is this? Sentient beings’ fetters are not the same; their afflictions vary in number, and their defilements differ in thickness. For this reason, the Tathāgata set forth various teachings. In some cases, a single medicine cures many afflictions; in other cases, many medicines cure a single affliction. It is like the six perfections governing one another: one practice serves as the master, and all other practices follow it. As for that single practice, it does not hold exclusively to an unchanging name; it arises in response to the affliction, matched with its corresponding medicine. If a conception of permanence arises, one counters it with impermanence; if a mind conceiving existence arises, one counters it with a mind of emptiness. When impermanence directs practice, all myriad practices become impermanence. Just as when giving generates eighty thousand [practices], all eighty thousand are acts of giving; this is what is called the abridged explanation. It is like the eight sounds of the Tathāgata: a single sound commands eight resonances, a single resonance commands a hundred teachings, a single teaching commands a hundred meanings, and each in turn commands another up to thousands of millions; one sound responds in thousands of millions, its transformations being like this. The abridged explanation governing practices is also illustrated by this analogy. This monk focused primarily on the abridged explanation, and was therefore declared foremost.