大方廣佛華嚴經疏 3.5

3.5

Seventh, the essence [wherein] conditions are brought together into the real: because the previous six approaches together enter into the one reality. There are also two meanings: first, gathering the branches into the root; second, bringing together the marks to reveal the nature. In the first, because the sacred teachings flow forth from the real, they are not different from the real; hence in the Mahāyānasaṃgraha they are called the twelve-division teaching flowed forth from tathatā. The tenth fascicle of the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi, explaining the 'supremely flowing tathatā', says: 'This refers to the teaching that flows forth from this tathatā being the most supreme among all other teachings.' Although that school does not establish that tathatā accords with conditions, it states that the Buddha's fundamental wisdom realizes the most pure dharmadhātu, and subsequently acquired wisdom establishes the teachings, calling them the flow of tathatā; gathering the branches into the root, it also takes tathatā as the essence of the teaching. Second, bringing together the marks to reveal the nature means that all those differentiated teachings, having no intrinsic nature since they arise from conditions, are themselves tathatā. Therefore, illusory marks are fundamentally exhausted, and the true nature is fundamentally apparent; the Tathāgata's speech always accords with tathatā. Hence the Vajrasamādhi-sūtra says: 'What I preach are words of meaning, not characters. What sentient beings preach are words of characters, not meaning.' The chapter 'Two Truths' in the Humane Kings Sūtra says: 'Great King! As for the wheel of the Dharma, the basic Dharma is like this (tathā), the geya is like this, up to the treatises are like this', and so forth. This sūtra clarifies that the teaching is itself tathatā, but does not say that all tathatā is the teaching; if one holds that all dharmas revealing meaning are the essence of the teaching, and all dharmas are tathatā, then there is no tathatā that is not the teaching.