金光明經玄義 2.12

2.12

Next is contemplating the mind's three kinds of bodhi. In discussing Suvarṇaprabhāsa: clearly contemplating a single thought-moment of the mind as simultaneously empty, conventional, and middle is itself the three kinds of bodhicitta. How so? The single mind and all minds crisscross in chaotic entanglement, like silk threads or grains of sand, like silkworms or moths, becoming suffering and affliction. If one knows the bodhicitta of the ultimate truth that is empty, saving sentient beings of deluded and chaotic mental factors and opening the blockage of the four entrenchments, this is generating bodhicitta through emptiness. As for generating bodhicitta through the conventional: although emptiness avoids delusion and chaos, the sūtra says: "sentient beings with minds disordered by emptiness", and their disordered wisdom is utterly blind and dark; furthermore, this is the pit of the three unconditioned states. It is the inimical bird to the Mahāyāna; not yet having completed the Buddha's dharmas, one should not extinguish feeling and take realization. If [one realizes that] the real is identical to the conventional, the conventional-truth bodhicitta, saving sentient beings of mental factors sunken in emptiness and opening the blockage of [delusions as numerous as] dust and sand—distinguishing the permissible and impermissible, distinguishing what is timely and appropriate, distinguishing medicines and diseases, distinguishing capacities and encounters—one does not abide in the unconditioned; therefore it is said to generate bodhicitta through the conventional. Emptiness is the remedy for a flighty mind; the conventional is the remedy for a sunken mind. Because of illness, there is medicine; if the medicine remains, it turns into illness again. When the illness is gone and the medicine ceases, one should properly abandon both. Neither empty nor conventional, doubly extinguishing both extremes, one immediately generates the bodhicitta of the middle way's paramārtha-satya, saving sentient beings of mental factors dwelling in the two extremes, opening the blockage of avidyā, and abiding in the middle way through the dharma of non-abiding; therefore it is said to generate bodhicitta through the middle. When spoken of, they seem to be in three sequential stages, but contemplation is not like that. In a single mind are the three kinds of bodhicitta: if one contemplates the middle, this is generating the unsurpassed bodhicitta based on gold (suvarṇa); if one contemplates the empty, this is generating the pure bodhicitta based on light (prabhāsa); if one contemplates the conventional, this is generating the ultimate bodhicitta based on radiance (uttama). This is Suvarṇaprabhāsa in contemplating the mind's three kinds of bodhi. The six identities of stages are as before.