大般涅槃經集解 62.4

62.4

Sengliang comments: "Each touching with their hands is a metaphor for hearing and seeing. Together they do not speak of the elephant's body, for partial seeing is not the elephant. Nor is it that they do not speak of it, for each grasps their part, so it is not that they do not speak. That rūpa is buddhadhātu: the direct causes differ, and the realized fruits also differ; grasping partially constitutes error, just as the golden color is one, yet the coiling of the serpent is different." Sengzong says: "This is the second round. It clarifies that the Tathāgata's explanation of the nature is not like ordinary people's: since it is true and without error, one should cultivate it. The king is a metaphor for the Buddha; the minister is a metaphor for the constantly abiding scriptural teaching; the elephant is a metaphor for the principle beneath the teaching. The blind men speak of the elephant according to what they touch; sentient beings lack wisdom, and so positing the aggregates, they speak of a self. Those who say that apart from the aggregates there is a self take this conceptualization too far, which will be refuted below. That it is neither identical to the six phenomena nor separate from the six phenomena: the provisional person is formed from the five aggregates. Buddhadhātu resides in the fruit; how could it be identical to the six phenomena? Yet without the cause there is no means to elicit the fruit; hence it is said to be not separate." Baoliang says: "When the blind men touch the elephant, if viewed one by one, they do not grasp the elephant's body; yet, again, one cannot be apart from these and have an elephant. Non-Buddhists and ordinary people, seizing upon the five aggregates and separation from the aggregates, individually conceptualize them as not being buddhadhātu; yet from beginning to end it is not separate from these six phenomena. That 'there are non-Buddhists who, although speaking of a self, in reality have no self' refutes the sixth distinct conceptualization that outside the five aggregates there is a self, asserting that the provisional combination of the five aggregates is named 'sentient being,' and there is no separate self outside the five aggregates."