妙法蓮華經玄義 7.60

7.60

First, as for the brief explanation: the subtlety of the original cause is the cause cultivated when first generating the bodhicitta and practicing the bodhisattva path. The sixteen princes propagating the sūtra and forming karmic connections at the time of the Buddha Mahābhijñājñānābhibhū were all actions done in the intermediate time, not the original cause. If the Sahā world were ground into ink, and traveling east across a thousand realms one were to place a single dot, until all lands, dotted or undotted, were pulverized into dust, and each speck of dust were an eon, and again exceeding this by hundreds of thousands of myriads of koṭis of nayutas of eons—even Maitreya, who is in the stage of succession, directly counting the worlds with the wisdom of the aspects of ways that proceeds out of emptiness, still could not know it; how much less could he finish counting the specks of dust? This is purely the Tathāgata's skillful metaphor to reveal the vastness and distance of that span; how much less could it be calculated through worldly wisdom and skillful reckoning! The text says: "With my buddha-eye I view that long-distant time as if it were today." Only a buddha can know this; such a long and distant time is all the causal stage of the traces, not the original cause. If the intermediate cause were retained, it would be difficult to believe later on; therefore the Lotus Sūtra brushes away the traces and eliminates doubt, showing that they are provisional and not real. When I originally practiced the bodhisattva path, it was not in the intermediate time; that which was practiced prior to this is named the original source, which is the subtlety of the original cause.