大般涅槃經義記 3.3

3.3

Clause by clause there should equally be five [elements]: 1. listing the name, 2. explaining, 3. concluding, 4. "is none other than the Tathāgata", 5. for those difficult to understand, further differentiation. However, in the present text the number is variable: some have the beginning without the end; some have the end without the beginning; some have the middle without beginning or end. In the explanations, some are purely doctrinal expositions, while some combine metaphors. Metaphors have direct and inverse forms: for direct metaphors, liberation is also like this; for inverse metaphors, liberation is not like this. In the correspondence between doctrine and metaphor, precedence is not fixed: some have doctrine first, next metaphor, and conclude later; some have metaphor first, next doctrine, and metaphor later; some have doctrine first, metaphor later, and then stop; the phrasing of the text is not fixed.