大般涅槃經集解 22.58

22.58

Sengliang notes: 'Reaching the placeless place': 'placeless' is called beginningless; everything from the beginningless past onwards is fully disclosed. Furthermore, 'placeless' is called nirvāṇa, because through disclosure one can reach nirvāṇa. 'Both the fat and the oil are exhausted' means that through practice the Buddha attains the natural marks and signs, and they also perish together with the person. 'If there is a bodhisattva' and below: those two persons who lacked faith use the merit of disclosure to dedicate toward bodhi, and are then named bodhisattvas. They are reviled by the icchantika, who says there is no cause and effect. Yet the bodhisattvas do not, on account of their evil, fail to refrain from abandoning them without saving them. Baoliang says: From the limit of saṃsāra up to nirvāṇa, all evil karma that has been done is fully disclosed. If one repents with this mind, there is no transgression that is not extinguished. The monkey grasping the moon in the water serves as a metaphor for the icchantika. The moon in the water is the reflection of the moon. The monkey represents the icchantika, the moon represents nirvāṇa, the water represents goodness with marks that is contaminated, and the moon in the water represents the reflection of nirvāṇa. Without water there is no moon reflection; because there is the Buddha speaking of contaminated goodness, which originally assists in heading toward nirvāṇa, their energy and share are correlated. Ordinary persons cultivate goodness with marks, and thus hold back heavy delusions and attain human and deva rewards; lacking great, coarse suffering, they invertedly call it bliss. This is just as the icchantika sees the bliss of the five desires in saṃsāra and calls it real.