釋摩訶衍論 5.28

5.28

The treatise says: Although the darkness of night is one, it can pervade ten rooms. One cannot say the darkness is one and the rooms are one, nor can one say the rooms are ten and the darkness is ten. In one room, a person illuminates the interior of the room with a bright lamp; the darkness is completely extinguished without remainder, and the light is fully manifest and all-pervading. When illuminating one room, the darkness is extinguished without remainder, but one cannot say the darkness in the nine rooms is extinguished without remainder; nor can one say that because the darkness of the other nine rooms is fully unextinguished, the darkness of the one room illuminated by the lamp is unextinguished. The afflictions of avidyā are also like this. 'Darkness of night' is a metaphor for avidyā. 'Ten rooms' is a metaphor for the bodies of sentient beings. 'Bright lamp' is a metaphor for wisdom. Therefore, one should know that although avidyā is one, because the continuums are distinct, severing and non-severing are each different. If when one sentient being's afflictions are exhausted, the remaining sentient beings cannot sever them, then in the bodies of sentient beings whose afflictions are not yet exhausted, original awakening and Buddha-nature are covered by avidyā. In the bodies of sentient beings whose afflictions are already exhausted, original awakening and Buddha-nature, having been covered by avidyā, are already completely liberated. The Buddha-nature free from obstructions and the Buddha-nature subject to obstructions are as different as heaven and earth; why do you now say that they are the same Buddha-nature, unseparated in its entity and pervading all sentient beings? Original awakening and Buddha-nature are equal to the realm of space: there is nowhere they do not pervade, nowhere they do not reach, nowhere they do not penetrate, nowhere they do not correspond; they are completely equal, of one taste and one characteristic, without differentiation. However, original awakening and Buddha-nature within the womb of avidyā being covered by defilement, and original awakening and Buddha-nature outside the dharmadhātu being free from defiled covering, are merely the direct-perception domain of the mind of cognitive grasping and deliberation, not the true-principle mind within intrinsic nature. Therefore, one should know that the principle of Buddha-nature is of only one kind, equally without differentiation. Therefore, the venerable Aśvaghoṣa spoke thus in the *Dazongdi xuanwen benlun*: