妙法蓮華經玄義 2.116

2.116

Third, regarding the inconceivable arising and ceasing of conditioned arising: this refutes the lesser and clarifies the greater, expounding for those of both sharp and dull capacities the phenomena outside the realms. The Avataṃsaka states: "The mind is like an accomplished painter, producing the various five aggregates. Throughout all the worlds, there is nothing that is not created from the mind." The "painter" is the mind of ignorance. "All the worlds" refers to the provisional, real, and land [categories] of the ten dharma realms. The treatises differ in their explanations of how the mind gives rise to all phenomena. Some say that the ālaya[-vijñāna] is the true consciousness, giving rise to all phenomena. Others say that the ālaya is the non-disappearing consciousness, an indeterminate ignorance that gives rise to all phenomena. If one fixedly grasps [its] nature as real, one falls into the error that primordial darkness first generates awareness, and from awareness arises the conceited mind. One would not even establish the conceivable conditioned arising within the realms, so how could one establish the inconceivable conditioned arising outside the realms? If the delusion is not the inconceivable object, how could the understanding that overturns delusion become inconceivable wisdom? The refutation of this is as explained in the Zhiguan. Here we clarify that the mind of ignorance is not from self, not from other, not from both, and not without cause; all four propositions are inconceivable. If there are causes and conditions of the four siddhāntas, it may also be explained: just as seeking a dream through the four propositions finds nothing attainable, yet within a dream one is said to see all things, so too, seeking ignorance through the four propositions finds nothing attainable, yet from ignorance arise all phenomena within and outside the realms.