金剛經纂要刊定記 3.149

3.149

Now, the stages and grounds taught across the various teachings are sometimes affirmed and sometimes negated. As the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra says: "The tenth ground is just the first, the second ground is just the eighth, up to having no ground whatsoever"—this clarifies negation. Sūtras such as the Benevolent Kings and Yingluo fully expound stages and grounds; this clarifies affirmation. Yet these affirmations and negations are all expounded according to capacity. If, as in the Avataṃsaka, the gradual gradations are ten-thousandfold diverse yet perfectly fused as one single boundary, then affirmation and negation are without obstruction, and this is an exposition in accord with the true nature. Yet relying on the Avataṃsaka's non-obstruction of affirmation and negation is truly the definitive meaning: from the standpoint of phenomena, they are negated; from the standpoint of persons, they are affirmed. Since person and phenomena are not divorced from one another, affirmation and negation ought to be held in balance. Furthermore, as the practitioner must at every thought-moment merge with the realm of the Buddha and trace back to exhaust the ocean of fruition, the gradual gradations will naturally differ. If one applies one's mind in anticipation of hierarchical ranks, this will ultimately obstruct realisational entry. Hence the Avataṃsaka Commentary states: "Practice is sudden practice; stages divide cause and effect." How much less so does the central theme of this sūtra, which is marklessness, admit an enumeration of shallow and deep stages! It is merely in terms of emotional afflictions gradually thinning and the grounds of stages progressively ascending that the signified meanings slightly correspond; hence they are cursorily correlated and subsumed.