法華遊意 1.32

1.32

Third, desiring to clarify that the two cognitions of the expedient and the real of all Buddhas of the ten directions and the three periods of time mutually assist and accomplish each other, he therefore preached this sūtra. Yet the minds of the Buddhas have never possessed expedient and real; how could they be one and three? Therefore, inner and outer are both obscured, and object and contemplation are both tranquil. It is merely within that which is devoid of names and marks that conventional names and marks are spoken; desiring to deliver sentient beings, one forcibly terms them expedient and real. Thus they mutually assist and accomplish each other: without the real, there is no way to discern the expedient; without the expedient, there is no way to discern the real. The real has the function of initiating the expedient, and the expedient has the efficacy of assisting the real. Hence the text says: "Within the one Buddha vehicle, I preach the three by making distinctions"—this refers to initiating the expedient from the real; "I devise such upāya to enable them to enter the buddha-jñāna"—this means using the expedient to lead to the real. However, among those who receive the teachings, some cling to the expedient and lose the real, while others cling to the real and lose the expedient. Those who cling to the expedient and lose the real are those who from the past up until now have clung to the teaching of the triyāna and are unable to awaken and enter the single reality. Those who cling to the real and lose the expedient are the bodhisattvas who, receiving the ekayāna of the Lotus Sūtra, having heard that the principle is exclusively one and there is no triyāna, consequently maintain the unity of its principle and lose the three applications. As the *Saddharmapuṇḍarīkopadeśa* comments on the "Chapter on the Metaphor of the Medicinal Herbs": "It comes in order to demolish the disease of the bodhisattvas; although born of one ground and moistened by one rain, yet the grasses and trees each have their differences." This clarifies that although the principle is one, in accordance with conditions there are three; how could one cling to the one and lose the three applications? However, those who formerly received the teaching of the triyāna, having lost the real, also forfeited the expedient; and those who cling to the teaching of the ekayāna, having forfeited the expedient, also lost the real. Therefore, both of these people lose the Tathāgata's two cognitions of the expedient and the real, and both dwell in inverted, erroneous annihilationism and eternalism. Desiring to break through the conditions of this mutual loss in the present and the past, and to cause them to recognize that the Tathāgata's two cognitions of the expedient and the real mutually assist and accomplish each other—having recognized the two cognitions, they then enter the buddha-jñāna and together return to the single Way—he therefore preached this sūtra.