法華文句記 3.187

3.187

From "just listing them" below, he next clarifies the intention behind the phrases: Although as explained above he has briefly cited texts and briefly explained their characteristics, it still amounts to merely listing them straightforwardly to discern the characteristics of the phrases, not yet having reached the level of fusing and interpenetrating them to discuss the abstruse purport. Yet whether refuting or establishing, nothing has been omitted, not leaning toward a single phrase and not stranded in a single corner. Therefore it is said: "If even this is so," how much more so when one looks afar at them with the great purport! Not being confined to a single orientation is called "an abstruse overview." "Orientation" means a single person or a single practice. That is to say, with a single principle and a single teaching, following whatever is established it subsumes it, and following whatever is refuted it eliminates it; adopting and rejecting with total freedom, hence it is called "vast and unconstrained." Ascending and emerging from obscurity and stagnation, hence it is called "lofty and luminous." Furthermore, fathoming the distant teaching is called "looking afar"; examining the profound principle is "an abstruse overview"; functioning all around horizontally is "vast and unconstrained"; pointing vertically through is "lofty and luminous." Revealing the interpretation and penetration of our own school, he therefore says "like this." If one reads the character as "suspended" (xuán instead of xuán), the meaning can also be seen. If others do not perceive this, by what means will they interpret the "Skillful Means Chapter"? As for "how much more so when discussing the ultimate purport and direction!", to refute ancient errors, one provisionally uses the characteristics of the teachings, the provisional and the real, refutation and establishment, opening and applying, emergence and submergence, abundance and contraction, proceeding and hiding; but if one treats both practice and understanding together, speaking jointly of self and other, surveying the preceding texts to discuss their purport, and gathering the preceding matters to discuss their direction, one must comprehend that the four phrases are merely the single dharma-nature. The dharma-nature is just suchness, the true character, tathatā, and nirvāṇa. Because the substance of the dharma-nature does not contradict all dharmas, does not receive all dharmas, does not abide in all dharmas, and does not enter all dharmas, therefore every single name, every single mental dharma, every single phrase and verse, every single cause and fruit, every single ordinary person and sage, every single primary and environmental reward, up to the ten pairs, is nothing other than the dharma-realm. Its meaning can be established with freedom and without obstruction, fully as explained in the Ten Gates of Non-duality. Whether root or branch, the substantial principle does not differ; speaking yet not speaking, not speaking yet speaking, the illuminating nature is not distant, free and inexhaustible. Although inexhaustible, it does not go beyond the four phrases; the four phrases are without phrases, yet being without phrases they are phrases; phrase by phrase, they encompass everywhere the buddha-dharmas of the ten directions. But prior to the Lotus Sūtra, teaching after teaching had four phrases, yet phrase by phrase they were not fully expressed; when one arrives at this assembly, they are of one flavor without difference, and so forth. It is fully as in the "Parable of the Medicinal Herbs": difference is just non-difference, and non-difference is just difference.