法華文句記 9.49

9.49

Regarding "not holding knives and staves" and so forth: now, in clarifying perfect practice, it is spoken from the middle position in contrast to the objects of humiliation, unlike ordinary persons who defend themselves with knives and staves, nor like the two vehicles who abandon and do not contemplate them. Although it is the primary practice, one must still distance oneself from those affairs, using the eighteen kinds of emptiness to contemplate both subject and object; how could it be like the ordinary or the Hinayāna, either abandoning or defending? That it is consistently called "broadening the above" and so forth means that although the text has earlier and later, the practice must be simultaneous; although the explanation has broad and brief, the essence of the dharma is not two. Therefore, the earlier brevity is used to contrast with the present breadth, unlike the ancient masters who split and dissected the sūtra text.