金光明經玄義 1.25

1.25

The critical distinction of the three kinds of nirvāṇa: When the hungry obtain food, the sick obtain recovery, the imprisoned obtain release, a monkey obtains wine, or the Brahmin woman Ciñcā eats her fill and points to her belly—all these are merely worldly people gratifying their feelings as nirvāṇa. If one conceives of the concentration of neither-perception-nor-non-perception or the heaven without thought as nirvāṇa, this is merely a wrong view falsely designated as nirvāṇa. If a person of excessive desire attains the contemplation of impurity as nirvāṇa, this is the nirvāṇa of a practitioner of the skillful means of the four wholesome roots. If, with the afflictions of the three realms exhausted, one realizes nirvāṇa with remainder, and then by incinerating the body and reducing wisdom to ashes one enters nirvāṇa without remainder—a bodhisattva has not attained this nirvāṇa; this is the nirvāṇa of the two vehicles through the analysis of dharmas found in the Āgamas. If persons of the three vehicles together exhaust the two bonds of defilements and fruition, this is the common nirvāṇa in the shared teaching. If one points to the Middle Way according with the principle as the nirvāṇa of purity of nature, Middle Way wisdom as the nirvāṇa of round purity, and manifesting in the world according to conditions, where when the fuel is exhausted the fire goes out, as the nirvāṇa of purity of skillful means—these three are each distinct and mutually unrelated; this is the nirvāṇa of the distinct teaching. If it is said that there are only the two nirvāṇas of purity of nature and purity of skillful means, without clarifying the conditional cause nirvāṇa, so that they are separate and not integrated, this is still the distinct teaching, not the nirvāṇa exemplified in the present sūtra.