般若心經略疏連珠記 1.7

1.7

Question again: "If one were setting forth profound sūtras of the sudden teaching such as the Śūraṅgama or the Perfect Enlightenment, it might accord with your lofty discourse. But as for this sūtra, it is clearly classified under the gradual teaching among the five periods. Why directly set forth the true source and wondrous awakening, blurring the sudden with the gradual—is there not an error in this?" Answer: "Our ancestral master's mind roamed within the great teaching and wondrously awakened to the perfect school; every line causes one to understand one's own mind, and every character pays homage to the sudden import. As the master of the perfect and sudden school and the ancestral master of Huayan, how could he be spoken of in the same breath as those scholars of the three periods and five periods, or those gradualists who converge provisional teachings to return to the real? What is more, it is what a single sūtra takes as its core doctrine, and that from which the myriad practices are born."