大方廣圓覺修多羅了義經略疏 1.5

1.5

Someone might say: 'The Way is without form; those who look cannot behold it. The Way has no fixed direction; those who travel cannot reach it. How much less so with written words! It lies only in realizing one's nature; how could a trifling tens of thousands of words expound it?' I reply: 'Alas! This is not enough to speak of the Way. Was it not said before: that which unites all virtues in great completeness and outshines all darkness in solitary radiance is perfect enlightenment? For perfect enlightenment can give rise to all dharmas, and all dharmas have never departed from perfect enlightenment. Now, as for the texts of the three baskets of sūtras, vinaya, and treatises transmitted to China in more than five thousand fascicles, what do they expound? Discipline, samādhi, and prajñā, and nothing more. What is sought by practicing discipline, samādhi, and prajñā? Perfect enlightenment, and nothing more. Perfect enlightenment is a single dharma; why unfold myriad practices to seek it? It is because the faculties and capacities of sentient beings differ. If so, then the Great Canon is entirely the sūtras of perfect enlightenment, and this commentary is the commentary on the Great Canon. To gather the texts of five thousand scrolls and penetrate them with a commentary of a few fascicles—is that not exceedingly concise! Why say it is prolix? When one cuts off the path of words, quenches the mind of conceptual thought, forgets subject and object, and extinguishes mental images, only then is it attained; it certainly does not reside in verbal expression.' Alas! That by which sentient beings come and go is the six destinies. Ghosts and spirits sink in the misery of secluded sorrow; birds and beasts harbor the grief of being frightened and startled; asuras are just now enraged; the devas are revelling in pleasure. That which can regulate thoughts and turn toward bodhi—only the human destiny can do so! If humans will not do so, I know not what can be done with them. I have often wandered in the Dhyāna Master's inner chamber and received the Master's overt instructions; having no way to repay them, I straightaway praise his dharma and announce it broadly to the great assembly; the rest is fully set out in the original preface.