梵網經古迹記 2.214

2.214

The commentary states: Yogācārabhūmi, fascicle forty, says: "To those who slander the Mahāyāna and those without faith, one must never rashly expound and awaken them. Why is that? Because upon hearing it they cannot have faith and understanding, and being veiled by the great obstacle of ignorance, they will give rise to slander. Due to that slander, just as one who abides in the pure moral discipline of the bodhisattva accomplishes an immeasurable great treasury of merit, that slanderer is also pursued by an immeasurable great treasury of sinful karma." Because of this great fault, it is now prohibited. Here, "those who have not received the precepts" prevents those who have not generated the mind [of bodhi]. As Yogācārabhūmi, fascicle forty, says: "When wishing to transmit the bodhisattva precepts, one should first expound the bodhisattva training rules and the marks of points of defeat from the Bodhisattva Piṭaka Mātṛkā, causing them to listen and receive them, and with wisdom observe their own aspirations and whether they are capable of reflecting upon them." "Non-Buddhists" refers to those who look for faults in the true Dharma. "Evil persons" refers to those who slander it upon hearing it. "Those with great wrong views" refers to those who reject both the internal and external; fearing it will increase their evil, one does not speak to them. As the Bodhisattvabhūmi-śīla-sūtra says: one should not speak to those without faith, up to not speaking to those who slander the Mahāyāna. Why is that? Because if they lack faith, they will fall into hell on this account. "Except for kings": the Buddha's Dharma is entrusted to two kinds of persons: first, the Buddha's disciples as internal protectors; second, kings as external protectors. Therefore it is expounded for them. Moreover, kings have authority and should encourage practitioners based on the moral discipline of the precepts; therefore they must know it. As for "not receiving the Buddha's precepts is called being an animal": although this body is human, because it lacks the cause of [noble] birth, it receives the name of its future fruit.