法華玄論 4.28

4.28

Answer: In discerning the central doctrine, this meaning was already explained: clarifying the correct Dharma as the vehicle, this vehicle being neither cause nor fruit is only then primary. Now, in terms of skillful function, the fruit vehicle is taken as primary. Why is this? The fruit is the wondrous culmination, whereas the cause is not yet the wondrous culmination. The title of the sūtra designates it as the Wondrous Dharma, so the fruit vehicle properly should be taken as primary. By indicating this wondrously culminating fruit, it causes the people of the three vehicles and all sentient beings to cultivate the wondrous cause and head toward this wondrously culminating fruit, after which only then can the causal vehicle be clarified. If from the very beginning one clarified the causal vehicle as primary, never indicating the goal to be attained, what would they know to head toward? It is like a person first knowing the place of jewels and only then undertaking practice to head toward it. Deducing from this, the fruit is primary. This meaning has already been explained extensively in the text, and consulting it one will naturally see it. Later, seeing the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkopadeśa explain "There are not even two, how much less three?"—it clarifies that there is no nirvāṇa of the two vehicles, but only the great nirvāṇa of the Tathāgata, which is named the Buddha-fruit. Hence we know that the two vehicles also take the fruit vehicle as primary, and the Great Vehicle also takes the fruit vehicle as primary; therefore the treatise merely cites nirvāṇa.