大般涅槃經集解 1.7

1.7

Master Daosheng states: The true principle is natural and spontaneous, and awakening is also a tacit accord [with it]. The true is without differentiation; how could awakening be easy? Its unalterable essence is serene and ever-illuminating; it is merely that through delusion one deviates from it, and the matter does not yet rest with oneself. If one can proceed to seek it, one reverses delusion and returns to the ultimate; returning to the ultimate, one attains the source. Yet it seems to start anew, and what begins must end. Permanence is obscured thereby. If one pursues its purport, it is simply that I have just now met it; the illumination does not exist only now. Since its existence does not belong only to the present, nothing precedes it, and so it is "Great." Being already called Great, it is therefore "Permanent." Permanence necessarily eliminates encumbrances, hence it is also called "parinirvāṇa." "Parinirvāṇa" properly translates as "extinction." Deriving from its exegetical senses, there are naturally many facets. Now this sūtra clarifies permanence so as to subdue one's delusion. Delusion having been permanently subdued, one then attains awakening. Upon awakening, the myriad delusions are extinguished; with this as the point of designation, how could it be anything other than a discourse on permanence? Furthermore, when bodhisattvas abide in this sūtra, they have already subdued and extinguished all encumbrances. Though they have not yet reached the ultimate, they can already demonstrate parinirvāṇa. In demonstrating to the multitude this wondrous nirvāṇa, it is again through manifesting it without exception that it is considered "Great." To further apply this title to the sūtra is indeed doubly praising its consummate excellence.