新譯華嚴經七處九會頌釋章 1.2

1.2

In the past, Chan Master Guifeng wrote the Threading the Avataṃsaka, but that text was lost and not transmitted. Fu'an's Threading was originally composed for practitioners of Chan; thus, although incisive and direct, it is inconvenient for students of the doctrinal teachings. I once wished to model a separate work on the Threading the Lotus Sūtra, but feeling ashamed of lacking the brush of Master Ouyi [Zhixu], I stopped. Last winter, at the Ruxin Hermitage on Huading Peak, I obtained the Explanation of the Verses on the Seven Places and Nine Assemblies; it was indeed authored by the Great Master Chengguan of Qingliang. That work contains only slightly more than thirteen thousand characters—not even one-hundredth compared to his Commentary and Subcommentary—yet it reveals virtually all the essential meanings of the entire sūtra. Moreover, its prose is plain and clear, comprehensible even to beginners, serving truly as a bridge into the doctrinal ocean of the Avataṃsaka! This was certainly not something Fu'an could achieve; and had Master Zhixu seen it, he would surely have sighed at being unable to equal it. Thereupon, after repeated proofreading and collation, I promptly committed it to the printing blocks to widen its circulation. In general, delighting in brevity and disliking prolixity is constant human nature; hence this book's circulation ought to have preceded the Commentary and Subcommentary, yet it awaited the present to be published. Alas! That things have their times of concealment and manifestation is truly so! The base text was transcribed by Shōdō in the kōshin year of the Hōei era (1704). That man loved antiquity and once collated such works as the Stone Wall Commentary on the Brahmajāla Sūtra for publication in the world.