華嚴經探玄記 1.46

1.46

"The second, the treatise master Jñānaprabha, distantly inheriting Mañjuśrī and Nāgārjuna, and recently receiving [the lineage of] Āryadeva and Bhāviveka, likewise established three teachings based on sūtras such as the Prajñāpāramitā and treatises such as the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: He maintained that when the Buddha was first in the Deer Park, he expounded the Hinayana Dharma for those of inferior faculties, elucidating that both mind and object exist. In the second period, for those of medium faculties, he expounded the Mahāyāna of the characteristics of phenomena (dharmalakṣaṇa), elucidating the Vijñaptimātra principle that objects are empty and the mind exists; because their faculties were still inferior and they could not yet be made to enter equal true emptiness, he gave this exposition. In the third period, for those of superior faculties, he expounded the Mahāyāna of signlessness, discerning that both mind and object are empty, equal, and of one taste, which is the truly definitive meaning. Moreover, these three stages are also explained in terms of three aspects: First, regarding the capacities accommodated: the first period accommodates only the capacities of people of the two vehicles. The second comprehensively accommodates both the great and small capacities, because according to the tenets of this school, a portion of the two vehicles do not direct themselves toward the fruit of buddhahood. The third accommodates only bodhisattvas, encompassing both the gradual and the sudden, because all those of the two vehicles direct themselves toward the fruit of buddhahood, there being no other path. Second, regarding the teaching: the first expounds only the Hinayana, the next encompasses the three vehicles, and the last is solely the one vehicle. Third, regarding the principles revealed: first, in order to refute the heterodox views of primordial nature and the like, he stated that conditioned phenomena are definitely real existents. Next, he gradually refuted the two vehicles' attachment to conditioned phenomena as real existents, stating that these conditioned phenomena are merely apparent existence; because they feared this true emptiness, he still retained nominal existence to guide them forward. Only in the later period, in accordance with the ultimate Mahāyāna, did he expound that these conditioned phenomena are themselves of empty nature, equal, and of one taste, not obstructing the two truths. Therefore, the Mahāyāna of the characteristics of phenomena, with its apprehending and so forth, belongs to the second teaching and is not the truly definitive meaning. The sequence of these three teachings, as quoted extensively by treatise master Jñānaprabha in his commentary on the Prajñāpradīpa-śāstra from the *Sujñānamahāyāna-sūtra*—rendered here as the Sūtra of Mahāyāna Wondrous Wisdom—was something never heard before in the past."