大毘盧遮那成佛經疏 3.14

3.14

The sūtra says: “Furthermore, Lord of Mysteries! Understand the accomplishment of the palace of siddhi through the simile of a city of the gandharvas.” The Expository Treatise says: “When the sun first rises, one sees city gates, watchtowers, palaces, and people entering and leaving. As the sun grows higher, it gradually vanishes; this city can only be seen with the eyes, yet does not genuinely exist. Someone who had never seen it before thought it was real joy and ran swiftly toward it. Approaching, it was lost, and as the sun rose higher it vanished. Tormented to the extreme by hunger and thirst, seeing hot vapor moving like wild horses, he thought it was water and again hastened toward it. Exhausted to the extreme in seeking it and finding nothing, he reflected and realized on his own, and his thirsty and longing mind subsided.” The practitioner is also like this: if, through wisdom, one sees that there is no self and no real phenomena, then one's inverted longings subside. The Śrāvaka sūtras lack this simile of the city of the gandharvas. Furthermore, using a city to illustrate the body, they teach that these manifold conditions are genuinely real, and only the city is a nominal designation, in order to destroy the notion of a self. Bodhisattvas of sharp faculties penetrate deeply into the emptiness of all phenomena, and therefore use the city of the gandharvas as a simile. Here, speaking of the palace of siddhi, there are superior, middling, and inferior kinds: the superior refers to the Akaniṣṭha Ghanavyūha Buddha-land, which transcends the three realms and cannot be seen or heard by the two vehicles; the middling refers to the pure and adorned [lands] of the ten directions; the inferior refers to the palaces of the devas, asuras, and so forth. When the practitioner accomplishes the three grades of vidyādhara-ṛṣi, abiding in such a palace of siddhi, one should contemplate with this simile: like the conditions of sea mist and sunlight, the settlements and magnificent multi-tiered terraces, figures and beings appear brilliantly; one must not foolishly give rise to greedy attachment and seek real things like those fools. By this reason, amid all sorts of supreme and wonderful five sense objects, the pure mind is free of obstruction.