觀音義疏記 3.10

3.10

Second, from "sudden capacity" below, separately showing how the great and the small obtain benefit, which has two [parts]: first, the marks of benefit for great capacities. For a class of sentient beings whose great seeds ripen first, they immediately evoke the superior response: entering the womb, staying in the womb, emerging from the womb, and attaining Buddhahood—all these marks are superior. Turning [the wheel of] the one real truth refers to the Avataṃsaka division's sudden preaching of the perfect teaching; and since it also incorporates the distinct teaching, it is called immeasurable. That sūtra prefigures the beginning and end of [the Buddha's] entire lifetime, so it sets up the simile: "Just as when the sun rises, it first shines on the high mountains, next shines on the dark valleys, and afterward shines on the flat ground." Our school interpretively expands the flat ground into three, corresponding to the five flavors of bovine [produce] in the Nirvāṇa [Sūtra]. The great capacities of the high mountains are able to evoke the sudden teaching; with the sunlight shining first, there is both sequential and non-sequential seeing of the Buddha-nature. In the Nirvāṇa [Sūtra], the simile of milk coming from a cow through the sequence of the five flavors corresponds to the sequential arising of the flavors of the five periods of teaching over a lifetime. Here, explaining that great capacities can see the Buddha-nature, it therefore additionally employs the simile of eating grass: taking the Snow Mountain to symbolize Vairocana Buddha, the enduring grass to symbolize the twelve divisions of scripture, the cow eating it to symbolize great capacities practicing contemplation, and thereby obtaining clarified butter to symbolize seeing the Buddha-nature.