大般涅槃經疏 20.4

20.4

[Zhuang]yao and [Seng]liang state: The five practices are brief, and the ten merits are extensive. The first and second merits broaden the noble practice, up to the ninth and tenth merits broadening the illness practice. Zong of Taichang states: From the first to the sixth, they broaden the preceding three practices, corresponding as primary counterparts; the latter four broaden the latter two, entirely failing to correspond. Guāngzhái states: The five practices and the ten virtues are identical in essence but different in meaning; both are causal goods. Arising from external worldlings and terminating at the exhaustion of study, evoking subsequent aggregate fruits is called 'practice', while repaying previous habitual causes is called 'merit'; thus practice is the cause and virtue is the fruit. Kāishàn states: The five practices are based on the shallow, while the ten virtues are based on the deep. The five practices begin with hearing the sūtra and terminate at the initial bhūmi; the ten virtues begin at the initial bhūmi and terminate at the vajra-mind; therefore the start of the chapter praises that they are not shared with śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, causing listeners to be astonished. The sixth virtue takes the vajra-mind as its essence. Hexi [Dharmakṣema] states: The five practices are the causes of nirvāṇa; because their purport is profound and remote, fearing that people might shrink from cultivating them, he adduces the adornment of the ten virtues to encourage and urge them to study. Now, all these are not so. The former two masters relied on the correspondence of broad and brief, but the meaning does not correspond, as they stated. Guāngzhái speaks of habitual causes and habitual fruits, which pertain to the stages of a bodhisattva and do not concern the Buddha vehicle. Kāishàn states that practice is shallow and virtue is deep; however, the text says: "When the ninth virtue first arises, the five matters are all brought to fulfillment." This should not be deep. The noble practice is cultivated with the mind of great nirvāṇa, and the infant practice says one attains great nirvāṇa; how could this suddenly be shallow? Hexi states that these are words of encouragement. Encouragement is ubiquitous—where would he not offer encouragement? Scrutinizing his surviving words, they do not agree with the sūtra. None of these are accepted. Now, relying on the sūtra text: "A bodhisattva should cultivate five kinds of practice"—practice is precisely cultivation. The text states: "When a bodhisattva cultivates the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, he attains ten matters of merit"—is this not realization? The previous three noble practices each speak of the fruit of practice, which also pertains to realization, but the text there is brief; the subsequent ten merits do not fail to clarify cultivation, yet the passages on realization are extensive. Because this matter is obvious, we determine practice to be cultivation and virtue to be realization.