請觀音經疏闡義鈔 3.48

3.48

"Each has fears": up to the tenth practitioner, where there is a lower stage that can be abandoned, that constitutes the meaning of fear. The sūtra says "poisonous afflictions"; by analogy with fear, this can be understood. "The difficulty of the golden light..." has two meanings. First, in terms of attaining forbearance with a physical body of birth, there are those who leap to the ten bhūmis; since their physical body of birth is still present, they have this difficulty. Second, in terms of dharmakāya bodhisattvas abiding in the land of change, they take ignorance as tigers and wolves, and so forth. "The ten persons herein": "ten" should be "two"; this is a scribal error. The previous eight certainly encounter actual physical tigers and wolves; only the two persons of the land of change do not. "Defiling afflictions are tigers and wolves": this also refers to the poisonous afflictions of practice. "Brahmacarya": brahma is a Western word, in full brahmā, here translated as pure. Ge Hong's Ziyuan states: "Brahma means clean." It simply adopts that meaning. "Inherent precepts" refers to the ten, such as not killing: keeping them is inherently good, and violating them is inherently bad; their goodness or badness does not depend on the Buddha's promulgation. Therefore, when a wheel-turning sage king appears in the world, he uses this teaching to transform people. If, after receiving the precepts promulgated by the Buddha, one violates [the precept against] killing and so forth, then the offense of defying the promulgation is added. Therefore it is said: "Whether one has received them or not, both are offenses." "Precepts concerning plants and trees": this is entirely an institutional prohibition. It was merely because non-Buddhists and laypeople supposed that plants and trees possessed life, and seeing monks cutting them down, said they had no compassion, that in order to put an end to such worldly criticism, the Buddha promulgated the precept. Therefore, if a monk violates it after receiving it, he incurs the offense of defying the promulgation. The laity have not received it; violating it carries no inherent offense. Thus it says: "If one has not received it, violating it does not incur an offense." The sūtra says "excrement and filth," which refers to the ten unwholesome actions.