天台菩薩戒疏 2.10

2.10

Eighth, the precept against turning away from the correct and heading toward the deviant. The mind of the great bodhisattva is Buddha-nature; to turn one's back on the Mahāyāna to practice and study the deviant and the lesser—its sin surpasses the seven heinous acts, making one an associate of externalists; hence an offense is instituted. It specifically comprises four conditions: first, it being the Mahāyāna teachings of precepts, concentration, and wisdom; second, conceiving them as such; third, one's words deviating and mind turning away; fourth, abandoning the perfect and studying the biased; whereupon one commits an offense. The text has two parts: first, designating the mind and mouth turning away from the correct; next, from 'yet receiving and upholding' onward, adducing the fault to conclude the offense. In the first part, as for 'eternal sūtras and vinaya, etc.', they are all Mahāyāna explicating the principle of the true mark, hence called 'eternal'. When the text says 'evil views', the evil of the emptiness side of the two vehicles and the evil of the existence side of externalists are both called evil. Thus in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, Kāśyapa recounted of himself that before hearing the four virtues of the perfect and eternal, he was a person of wrong views; is what is wrong not evil? The four words 'yet receiving and upholding' head the various phrases below. As for 'receiving and upholding all prohibitive precepts', they are not correct deportment; precepts of chickens, dogs, and the like are not for liberation, and are all called wrong views. Wrong views encompass many things, which is why it says 'all', and so forth.