妙法蓮華經玄義 8.34

8.34

Understanding characters in this way, one's hands hold no scrolls yet one constantly reads this sūtra; one's mouth makes no sound yet one universally recites all scriptures; the Buddha does not preach the Dharma yet one ever hears the brahma-voice; the mind does not deliberate yet it universally illuminates the dharma realm. How could such learning not be great? One should know that black characters are the root of all dharmas. Blue, yellow, red, and white are also like this. They are neither characters nor non-characters, double-illuminating both characters and non-characters. They are neither ineffable nor not ineffable, neither invisible nor not invisible. What is there to select? What is there not to select? What is gathered in? What is not gathered in? What is discarded? What is not discarded? If affirmed, all are affirmed; if negated, all are negated. To be able to penetrate all things in the color black, yet not be in all things; not to penetrate all things, yet to penetrate all things; neither not-so nor so: all dharmas are perverse, all dharmas are correct. If one does not understand the color black in this way, then one does not know characters and non-characters. Whether yellow, white, red, and blue, whether resistant or non-resistant, one will not be able to know any of them. If one penetrates the color black, one knows that the other colors are also like this. This is the very meaning of the Lotus Sūtra taking form as the sūtra. The sense datum of sound is also like this; or a single sound explains a single dharma (and so forth).