首楞嚴義疏注經 8.2

8.2

Second, turning back delusion and returning to reality by explaining the characteristics of the stages, in three parts: first, explaining the progressive cultivation. Previously, because avidyā stirred that calm mind, proceeding from subtle to coarse, the three marks and the two inversions were formed. Moreover, because the world combines and interacts, and the faculties and dusts oppose each other to form the nature of karma, twelve divisions arise, differentiating the classes of birth, wandering in the bitter sea like a bucket on a well-wheel, just like flowers in space chaotically arising and perishing in the pure, still luminosity. All of these are dust-toil and defilements that contaminate the true nature so that it cannot attain purity. Now, wishing to transform defilement into purity and turn the flow back to the origin, progressive cultivation is established as an antidote. Below, the analogy says: 'Just as in a clean vessel from which poisonous honey has been removed, one washes the vessel with hot water and various ashes and perfumes, and afterward stores amṛta.' Because of this progression, the stages are established. The text has two parts: first, concluding the preceding to introduce the subsequent, which has two parts: first, concluding the prior causes of inversion.