大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔 9.37

9.37

The commentary's words, "In terms of faculties, each constitutes a distinct category of faculty," distinguish against confusion. It is not that a single person is first great and later small. If it is in a single person's lifetime, then explaining first small and later great belongs to the gate of "integrating the branches into the root." Therefore, in the gate of integrating the branches into the root there are two types of people: first, one person fully traverses both small and great, such as the four great śrāvakas and others. Second, those who initially receive the small do not necessarily later receive the great, because their small nature is fixed; yet they hear the later expounding of the great, and thus they differ from those who are small from beginning to end as mentioned earlier. Those who later receive the great do not necessarily have to come from the small, because there are faculties of sudden awakening; yet they know that the small was expounded earlier, and thus they are not great from beginning to end.