大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔 2.39

2.39

Second, "revealing mind-contemplation without waiting to participate in Chan": although the sūtra broadly explains the three trainings, it primarily explains concentration (samādhi), all of which was expounded from the Tathāgata's concentrated mind. Thus the sūtra says: "What you have spoken are textual words and not the meaning. What I have spoken are words of meaning and not text." How much more so for the nature-ocean of the Avataṃsaka, which expounds what the Buddha realized without departing from the place of awakening, personally demonstrated from the ocean-seal samādhi (sāgara-mudrā-samādhi) and received by the concentrated minds of the great bodhisattvas! People of the past did not examine the ultimate principle and did not attend upon good spiritual friends; they merely valued searching the text and did not esteem penetrating the tenets, exclusively laboring over verbal explanations. They could not use the sacred teaching as a bright mirror to reflect their own minds, nor could they use their own minds as a lamp of wisdom to illuminate the subtle intent of the sūtra. They regarded profound words and principled explanations alike as mere echoings, and termed emptying oneself to seek the tenets as arbitrary judgment, not knowing that the myriad practices are meant to bring realization of one's own mind. In one lifetime of restless toil, they merely counted others' treasures, or only when their years declined and grew frail did they seek to discard the teachings and pursue Chan. Not only did this stifle the Buddha's mind, but it truly led later students astray. Now, countering all of this, I have composed this commentary to cause understanding to become contemplation, and phenomena to be practice, so that while the mouth speaks its words, the mind penetrates its principle; using the tenet of transmitting mind with mind, I disclose the gate realized by all Buddhas, harmonize the Chan gates of the Northern and Southern schools, and summarize the profound import of the Tiantai three contemplations, causing the teaching to unite with the tenet that transcends words, and the mind to be identical to the mind of all Buddhas, without violating the norms of teaching and principle, secretly stepping into the realm of the forgotten mind, without needing to look at another's face again, thinking there is a separate gate of forgetting mental contrivance; causing the words of the great principle to be revealed, and the commentary's text to resolve doubts spontaneously with nothing left concealed. It is difficult to recount this in full.