大般涅槃經集解 1.42

1.42

Mingjun comments: Broadly speaking, this sūtra may be divided into three distinct parts: first is the narration, namely the "Introductory Chapter"; second is the concise teaching, from "Cunda" through the "Questions of the Great Multitude Chapter"; and third is the extensive teaching, from the "Manifestation of Illness Chapter" through the end of the sūtra text. Within the concise teaching there are three sections: first is establishing the tenet and exhorting questions, from "Cunda" through the parable of the two men, old and young; second is the questions and answers, from Kāśyapa of the Tāla settlement raising questions into the "Questions of the Great Multitude Chapter"; and third is the concise entrustment, from "At that time the great assembly addressed the Buddha" in the "Questions of the Great Multitude Chapter" through the end of the chapter. Within the extensive teaching there are three sections: first is the elaboration of the previous establishment of the tenet, namely the "Manifestation of Illness Chapter"—for food is the root of life and illness is the cause of cessation: the earlier "Cunda Chapter" used food to clarify the manifestation of life, while this chapter uses illness to clarify the display of cessation; second is the elaboration of the purport of the earlier questions and answers, from the Five Practices through the "Kauṇḍinya Chapter"—what this sūtra clarifies are the causes, fruits, cognitive objects, and practices of permanence: here, the Five Practices and Ten Merits elaborate practice and elaborate causes; "Lion's Roar" and "Kāśyapa" elaborate cognitive objects; and "Kauṇḍinya" elaborates the permanent fruit, hence saying, "Because impermanent form is extinguished, one obtains the liberated, permanent, and blissful form." What the concise and extensive teachings clarify regarding causes, fruits, cognitive objects, and practices is already broadly complete and comprehensive; but when one wishes for the teaching to extend to the future and for transformation to be transmitted for eternal kalpas, if one does not smash those heterodox teachings and subdue the source of delusion, it will ultimately become an impediment to dissemination thousands of years later. Therefore, the third is converting the various non-Buddhists to extinguish the heretical groups so that the great beings who propagate [the teaching] will be unhindered in body and mind; hence it is called the elaboration of the previous entrustment, from "At that time the non-Buddhists" downward through the end of the sūtra text.