大般涅槃經集解 70.121

70.121

Baoliang remarks: Then he was enlightened. The great village exemplifies the four noble truths; the grove of śāla trees exemplifies the birth and death of the twenty-five states of existence. Now, birth and death are phenomena outside the principle, hence they are compared to what is outside. The single tree within exemplifies the Buddha in the past when he was an ordinary person. That which was born before the forest exemplifies the past sentient beings of the twenty-five states of existence later cultivating the uncorrupted dharmas of the ten stages. 'Fully one hundred years' refers to the practices of the ten stages. 'At that time the master of the forest irrigated it with water' refers to past Buddhas acting as his external conditions, advancing and generating his good roots, or bestowing upon him distinct prophecies. The tree becoming rotten below exemplifies the Buddha exhausting and cutting off the obstacle of afflictions. 'Only the genuine and solid remained' means that once the false and deceptive birth-and-death five aggregates were exhausted, only the wondrous fundamental nature of the spiritual illumination, the asaṃskṛta dharmatā, the true Dharma, remained. When a non-Buddhist sets forth a parable and grasps the realization like this, how much more should practitioners revere and believe it!"