維摩經玄疏 3.187

3.187

First, regarding sūtras and treatises discerning the bodhisattva's stages of the distinctive teaching differently: Looking into the distinctive teaching, it directly clarifies the principle of conditioned conventional designations, buddha-dharmas countless as the sands of the Ganges, and tathatā buddha-nature. The bodhisattva who receives this teaching contemplates the principle of the three truths, cultivates for eons, and severs distinct delusions of view and thought as well as ignorance countless as the sands of the Ganges, desiring to see buddha-nature and seek the eternal four-virtue nirvāṇa. In now explaining that the distinctive stages differ, there are briefly three points: first, the sūtras explain different numbers of stages; second, the levels of severing and subduing differ; third, the correspondences to doctrinal gates differ.