大般若波羅蜜多經般若理趣分述讚 1.5

1.5

Regarding recounting the essential purport of the sūtra: Within the nine hundred years after the Buddha's nirvāṇa, there was an arhat, a great master named Bhaviveka. His appearance accorded with the conduct of the Sāṃkhyas, demonstrating freedom from partisan grasping; his mind rested in the principles of Śākya, his doctrine free of one-sided fixation. People of his time called him Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva; his miraculous and noble virtues are detailed extensively in separate records. His Karatalaratna states: "Objects of knowledge are generally of two kinds: first, conditioned; second, unconditioned. Because ordinary fools do not correctly understand the non-erroneous nature of the conditioned and unconditioned in ultimate truth, they falsely cling to intrinsic nature and differences among phenomena, augmenting various snares of wrong views. Like an unwise painter in the world who paints a terrifying image of a yakṣa with blades or the image of a woman, his eyes dazed and his mind confused, thinking them truly real—because of clinging to them as real, he himself gives rise to terror or generates lustful attachment, making numerous reckonings regarding those objects and multiplying the snaring nets of conceptual discrimination and various views. If one correctly understands the non-erroneous nature of the conditioned and unconditioned in ultimate truth, at that time, like a wise painter in the world, one does not cling to them as real intrinsic nature; one is not entangled by the differences among conditioned and unconditioned objects as previously described, like a silkworm in its cocoon. Because those do not exist, the practice of entering through nonconceptual insight is accomplished. Yet to realize supramundane nonconceptual wisdom, one must accumulate the collyrium medicine of non-erroneous contemplation of emptiness that can destroy all cataracts of wrong views. To thus accumulate the non-erroneous contemplation of emptiness requires the wisdom born of hearing that can dispel all intrinsic natures of objective referents; therefore one should listen to this profound Prajñā Sūtra. Relying on this explanation to establish the essential purport: in true nature, the conditioned is empty, arisen from conditions like an illusion; the unconditioned lacks reality, not arising, like a sky-flower. Here, the conventional admits of slight existence; according to the ultimate, all is empty. Here, the simile of the painter, wise or unwise, terrified or lustful, illustrates the Buddhas and bodhisattvas versus all ordinary beings: incurring their own karma, they conversely produce hatred and love; the wise one knows it is a painting, remaining in sameness toward both, producing neither fear nor lust." Maitreya's Madhyāntavibhāga verse states: "Unreal discrimination exists; duality does not exist in it. Emptiness alone exists here; and in that, this also exists. Therefore all dharmas are said to be neither empty nor non-empty: because of existence, non-existence, and existence; this accords with the middle way." This takes having no clinging to existence, non-existence, conditioned, and unconditioned as the essential purport, as is widely explained.