大般涅槃經義記 6.11

6.11

Question: Knowing all phenomena collectively is easy, but knowing them distinctively is difficult; hence persons of the two vehicles can only know suffering and so forth in their collective marks, but cannot know them distinctively, whereas only bodhisattvas can know their differentiations. Why then here does one proceed first distinctively and then collectively? Explanation: Phenomena are of two kinds: first, identical marks; second, distinct marks. Emptiness, non-self, and so forth, viewed uniformly across all phenomena and comprehensively, are called 'identical marks'. The differing phenomenal marks of form, feeling, conception, and so forth are called 'distinct marks'. Between these two, if one wishes to trace identity in order to know distinction, the collective is easy while the distinctive is difficult, so one first contemplates the collective and then the distinctive; if one wishes to trace distinction in order to know identity, the distinctive is easy while the collective is difficult, so one first contemplates distinctively and then collectively. Here, following the latter approach, one proceeds first distinctively and then collectively. These preceding three kinds clarify emptiness in terms of affairs; the conditioned and the unconditioned clarify emptiness in terms of dharmas. Suffering, impermanence, and other categories of arising and ceasing dharmas are the conditioned; space, analytical cessation, non-analytical cessation, and the like are the unconditioned. Among conditioned dharmas, the absence of self and what belongs to self is called 'conditioned emptiness', not the emptying of the substantial entity of dharmas; among unconditioned dharmas, the absence of self and what belongs to self is called 'unconditioned emptiness', and here too the substantial entity of dharmas is not yet emptied.