新華嚴經論 1.8

1.8

Regarding the second, the Bodhisattva Precepts as in the Brahmajāla Sūtra taking the simultaneous manifestation of sentimental existence and the real as its tradition: The Tathāgata, for the sake of beings with great aspiration among ordinary beings who delight in practicing compassion and aspire to seek the Buddha fruit, designates Vairocana Buddha as the fundamental body and the thousands of hundreds of millions as nirmāṇakāyas, causing them suddenly to recognize the branches and return to the root. Thus the sūtra says: 'Such thousands of hundreds of millions / each received assemblies as numerous as dust motes, / and together came to my place.' It also says: 'If a person receives the Buddha's precepts, / they immediately enter the stages of all buddhas; / their stage being already identical with Great Awakening, / they are truly the children of all buddhas.' This refers to the nature precepts, and is therefore the real tradition. This is suddenly demonstrating the dharmakāya nature precepts for beings of great aspiration, while inferior ones receive gradual [teaching]; a single teaching responds to two types of capacities. That 'such thousands of hundreds of millions each received assemblies as numerous as dust motes and together came to my place' clarifies abandoning the provisional to approach the real; this is the teaching of real existence. Within the teaching itself, it suddenly demonstrates both provisional and ultimate; hence it differs from the Hīnayāna, where the before is impermanent and the after is also impermanent, merely aiming at birth among humans and devas. Although it establishes the tradition of real existence, it is not the same as that expounded by Vairocana in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. In this [Brahmajāla] sūtra, they still follow the transformations of the nirmāṇakāya before arriving at the fundamental body. The tradition of the Perfect Teaching, in a single stroke, suddenly reveals the fundamental body, the great wisdom saṃbhogakāya of the dharmadhātu, with cause and effect, principle and phenomena simultaneously manifest. Furthermore, the measure of the world in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and the measure of the lotus form in the Brahmajāla Sūtra are also not the same, being entirely different in breadth and narrowness, as expounded at length below.