大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔 3.3

3.3

Fourth, "clipping superficial verbiage and directly discussing the ultimate principle": literary flourish still obscures principle; how could proliferating words not bewilder the mind? When structural outlines are overly broken up, they already scatter like swirling dust; repeating sūtra phrases merely fills paper and ink. Casually matching Sanskrit words brings no benefit to the sūtra text; sequentially enumerating lines of the sūtra offers no contemplation of principle. Like smoke stifling fire, or clouds clouding the vast sky, I now clip and excise them all, like a long wind rolling up mist. However, where the sūtra often has ten lines, if more than half are difficult, I explain them completely: where difficult, I exhaust the subtleties without being verbose; where easy, I state them briefly without omissions. If five or six lines or fewer are difficult, I extract those lines and explain them, leaving the easy unelaborated. If the text and meaning are entirely easy, I provide only broad outlines; if the text is easy but the meaning difficult, I summarize and gather the general import; if the text is difficult but the meaning easy, I merely explain the text in detail; if text and meaning are both difficult, I first present the meaning and then explain the text. Making it substantive without being crude, concise yet necessarily thorough—this is my original intention.