天台菩薩戒疏 2.11

2.11

Ninth, the precept against failing to care for the sick and suffering. The bodhisattva's essence is great compassion; seeing sickness and not rescuing damages compassion on both sides, and retreating from bodhi truly stems from this. It specifically comprises four conditions: first, it being the suffering of sickness; second, perceiving it as the suffering of sickness; third, lacking conditions such as being ill oneself; fourth, departing with a mind of aversion; whereupon one commits an offense. The text has two parts: first, designating the name, recounting the facts, and instituting action; next, from 'yet a bodhisattva' onward, concluding the offense for stopping what should be done. When it first speaks of 'eight fields of merit', the Three Jewels are three, parents are five, sixth is the sick person, seventh is digging wells along desolate roads, and eighth is building bridges at crossings. Noble beings of the four fruits, upādhyāyas, and so forth are all subsumed under the Jewel of the Saṅgha; thus in Mahāyāna sūtras both bodhisattvas and those of the two vehicles are called Saṅgha. This is taken from what is especially critical to relieve, not from the rich or thin quality of the field of merit. It is also like in the Lotus Sūtra where the sin of reviling the Buddha is light, but the sin of disparaging a human is heavy; because a physical body depending [on external causes] readily shifts its mind when encountering conditions of praise or disparagement. The next part can be seen.