大般涅槃經集解 48.18

48.18

Sengliang comments: The first metaphor uses the master of nominal designation, ignorance, and afflictions to symbolize the king. When the sūtra refers to the four great elements, they symbolize the four snakes. Containing the defiled body is symbolized by a single basket. Causing one to tend and protect it symbolizes caring for and rearing [them]. Failing to adjust properly so that the body breaks down and life ends symbolizes being executed in the marketplace. Seeing the suffering of old age and death symbolizes terror. Knowing that there is no real self symbolizes fleeing. Baoliang comments: The king symbolizes the Buddha. The four poisonous snakes symbolize the four great elements. Being contained in a single basket is like saying that the four great elements constitute a single body. Causing a person to feed and care for them means causing one to contemplate this body as suffering, empty, and impermanent. If understood in terms of [the path], one wishes to rely upon this body of four great elements to practice the Path and advance in virtue; hence one must tend and care for it. Rubbing and washing its body means teaching one to cultivate the contemplation of emptiness, causing one to recognize the faults of the four great elements, whereupon wholesome dharmas will continually arise; this is symbolized by rubbing and washing. If one does not contemplate the four great elements as empty and instead cherishes and clings to one's own body, one will inevitably sever the life of wisdom; this corresponds to being executed in the marketplace. That the person hears the king's strict command means that the bodhisattva receives the Buddha's teaching and contemplates the faults of the four great elements. Abandoning the basket and fleeing means carefully contemplating this body, seeing only that the four great elements are constantly empty and nominal, lacking any single reality; thus one attains the emptiness of nominal designations. To speak of the four great elements, five aggregates, and six sense-bases—all of them allow sentient beings equally to cultivate the contemplation of nominal emptiness. It simply depends on their initial contemplation, grasping a dharma and entering emptiness, which is the same for an internal ordinary person. But because the text cannot state them simultaneously, it explains them in successive stages.