般若心經略疏連珠記 2.7

2.7

From the sūtra's "Śāri[putra]" down is the second [major division]: setting forth the real meaning in detail. It is divided into five parts: first, brushing away external doubts. The reason this rubric was established is precisely because Duke Zheng had long recited this sūtra and had beforehand become thoroughly familiar with the translator's explanation; the author of the commentary therefore complied with what he had heard and seen, and thus made this statement. Hence Ci'en says: "Now, explaining that form and emptiness mutually reveal each other causes the meaning to become increasingly clear, in order to shatter doubts and attachments." First, the mental activity of the Two Vehicles is narrow and inferior, finding no joy in benefiting others; second, within the Mahāyāna, they pursue inversions and give rise to doubts and the like. This was not truly the central purport of the commentary's author or of the sūtra; thus there is a rubric that conveniently reveals the correct meaning, which then accords with the general intention of this school in explaining the sūtra. / In this there are two [parts]: first, chanting the sūtra. Qingliang says: "Form is the foremost of the characteristics of dharmas and the first of the five skandhas; therefore, whenever sūtras and treatises explain a principle, they always address form first." Hence in the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā* and other texts, from form on up down to the knowledge of all aspects, the eighty-odd categories all take form as the exemplar. If dharmas are briefly gathered, they do not exceed ten pairs; the substantial phenomena upon which they rely are all identical to emptiness without exception. Therefore all the patriarchs have said, "the principle of true emptiness, phenomena such as illusory form," thereby expounding the non-obstruction of the ten gates.