新華嚴經論 1.30

1.30

Fourth, the difference in the requesters of the Dharma: when the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra was expounded, the requester of the Dharma was Śāriputra, who served as the leader of those exhorting and requesting. When the Avataṃsaka Sūtra was expounded, the Buddha had Mañjuśrī, Samantabhadra, and the bodhisattvas corresponding to each stage each expound the Dharma gate of their own stage as the leaders of the exposition. The Buddha exemplifies the fruit-dharma; taking the fruit as cause, the practice of great compassion accomplishes fundamental wisdom, and the substance of the fruit naturally completes itself; hence, wordlessly he does not speak. Because the practice of great compassion arises from the unconditioned fundamental wisdom, Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra exemplify that the causal stage can be expounded, expounding the Buddha's fruit-dharma to reveal it and awaken sentient beings. The worldly methods of calculation in the Chapter on Asamkhyeyas are vast and difficult to measure; only the Buddha has fathomed them exhaustively, and as they do not belong to the gates of cause and effect within the five stages, they are the Dharma gate within the Buddha's own stage, which the Buddha himself expounds. The Chapter on the Merits of the Radiance of the Secondary Marks concerns the Tathāgata's own completed cause and effect, where the Buddha subsequently expounds the Dharma gate of the power of intrinsic nature and the constant radiance of merit and wisdom, revealing that it does not belong to the active causes and effects within the five stages; hence, the Buddha also expounds it himself. This shows that the Buddha-fruit is free from the two kinds of delusion. Except for these two chapters of the scripture, all the remaining thirty-eight chapters are Dharma gates of practices within the five stages; therefore, the Buddha does not expound them himself, but entirely directs the bodhisattvas of the respective stages—the ten faiths, ten abodes, ten practices, and so forth—to expound them themselves, the Buddha merely emitting light to signify them. The characteristics of the Dharma signified by the light he emits will be explained in detail later. When the Avataṃsaka Sūtra was expounded, there was not a single śrāvaka or minor bodhisattva serving as requester of the Dharma; it was entirely the great bodhisattvas within the Buddha's fruit stage who asked and answered among themselves, establishing the practices of the Buddha-fruit's Dharma gates. In order to awaken those of great faculties, they suddenly took the Buddha-fruit and directly received it as the cause. Cause takes the fruit as cause, and fruit takes the cause as fruit, like planting seeds. Through the power of concentration and wisdom, by contemplating it, this can be seen. Therefore, we now speak of the difference in the requesters of the Dharma.