大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔 25.52

25.52

Regarding the commentary's text from "Why is this?" onward: this is the third part, revealing the reason why it is mistaken; one can understand it by searching out the meaning. Yet still fearing that it might be difficult to see, let me clarify it by means of an analogy. It is like ten small dishes placed in a single tray, and ten pellets placed in each of the ten dishes. The single tray is like the ocean of kṣetras; one small dish is like a kṣetra-species; and a pellet is like a single kṣetra. If one says that within a single tray there are pellets [equivalent to] a tray's dust motes without distinction, how could one use the number of pellets in a single tray without distinction to fill out that number? The pellets in a single tray are only one hundred; the dust motes of even a single pellet are already difficult to count, not to mention that if one hundred pellets were ground completely into dust, the number would be immeasurable. To then take the number of one hundred to fill out the number of dust motes of the pellets in a single tray—this is why it is reckless. If one grasps the point of this analogy, following the number is easy to understand.