大般涅槃經集解 11.9

11.9

Sengliang states: This reveals the characteristics of rectifying others. It is because one is able to cause the recipient to attain understanding and awakening. The woman at that time is precisely this case. If her distraction over thinking about her child had not first been dispelled, she would not have awakened to the teaching on permanence; this is what is called skilfully rectifying people. Sengzong states: Here the four dharmas of the bodhisattva are clarified, yet they are revealed through the Buddha because it is intended to show that the marvel of exhausting the four belongs only to the ultimate person. When the Tathāgata presents teachings, he gauges the faculties and capacities, so that what he expounds is necessarily beneficial; this is precisely rectifying others, causing the great masters who propagate the Dharma to be devoted to following his methods. Another interpretation: If one wishes to discuss benefiting and transforming, its paths are naturally manifold: there are those who attain benefit through the exposition of the Dharma, and those for whom it is suitable to be benefited merely through spiritual superknowledges; what is clarified here takes only the exposition of the Dharma. Baoliang states: Within this text, it also possesses being able to answer in accordance with questions and skilfully understanding causes and conditions. Why? Responding to that person with an exposition is rectifying others. The back-and-forth discrimination of principle is answering in accordance with questions. Knowing that person's capacities and affinities and providing what is suitable is understanding causes and conditions. It is not yet known whether this woman had just arrived when nirvāṇa was being expounded. It was not so. Having arrived and sat down, she first harboured a doubt, and subsequently had a thought. The doubt was: she doubted whether the Buddha was omniscient or not. Next, she thought about whether the butter her child had consumed was digested or not. Because she harboured these two, her listening to the Dharma did not penetrate. The Buddha responded to her mind and borrowed this as an analogy. Zhixiu states: It is also citing genuine teachings of the past to illuminate present matters.