大般涅槃經集解 57.56

57.56

Sengliang remarks: "He cites the Buddha's past teaching on the cultivation of the path with analogies of similarity and dissimilarity as verification." Baoliang says: "Intending to inquire again, he first recapitulates what the Buddha taught in the past. The Buddha said that because the mind is uninterrupted, it can increase moment by moment. If so, a srotāpanna should also have uncontaminated [states] succeeding uncontaminated [states]; how could he abandon the uncontaminated and be born in an evil realm? Yet a srotāpanna attains the uncontaminated [insight of] seeing the truths, is free from the karma of the three outflows, and is already at the stage of a third-abode bodhisattva; how could he receive retribution in a borderland? Therefore, when our school investigates the principle, in meaning it should not be so. If even an ordinary person with slight meritorious power is not born in a borderland, how much less should a srotāpanna receive such retribution? Here, speaking of being born in an evil realm means that one abandons the pure five aggregates of seeing the truths without outflows and gives rise to the afflictions of the gate of cultivation; hence it is called being 'born in an evil realm.'"