大般涅槃經集解 53.58

53.58

Sengliang states: 'Because phenomena are impermanent, cessation can destroy them' is like wood being impermanent, so fire can burn it. 'Production can produce them' is like a sprout having the characteristic of production, so water and grain can produce it. 'Good son, seeing non-empty phenomena' answers his first objection. He does not say that their nature cannot be empty; he refers to the conventional-truth provisional function seen by the minds of sentient beings as non-empty. Now, recognizing it in accordance with the provisional is precisely illuminating emptiness; hence it is not an inversion. Just as greed and the like exist merely in terms of conventional truth, leading to evil retributions, so too it is with the nature of matter. If an ordinary person resolutely grasps them as real, that can be made out to be an inversion; but this clarifies that bodhisattvas do not form this understanding, and thus it is not an inversion. Taking night to be day would be an inversion; this clarifies that knowing according to the provisional and recognizing according to emptiness—how could that be an inversion?