法華義疏 8.4

8.4

Next, to explain the intention of this chapter's coming according to the Fahua lun: the burning house parable refutes the illness of ordinary beings; the impoverished son parable refutes the illness of the two vehicles; the cloud and rain parable refutes the illness of bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas, hearing what was taught above that there is only the ekayāna, would then assume that ultimately there are no longer the expedient means of the triyāna. This is obtaining the real and losing the expedient, preserving the substance and forgetting the function. However, only by understanding the expedient does one awaken to the real, and only by reaching the function does one perceive the substance. If one neither understands the expedient nor awakens to the real, then expedient and real are both lost, and substance and function both perish. To cure this illness, it is therefore clarified that although produced from one earth and moistened by one rain, the various grasses and trees each have distinctions; although the ultimate principle is non-dual, with respect to conditions there are five. Thus the meaning of expedient and real is accomplished, and substance and function are then manifested. Since this sūtra is called "the Dharma that instructs bodhisattvas, which the Buddhas protect and keep in mind," causing the great beings to be freed from the illnesses of ordinary beings and the two vehicles, as well as the illness of bodhisattvas, is precisely the Dharma that instructs bodhisattvas, which the Buddhas protect and keep in mind.