金剛般若論會釋 2.58

2.58

'Approaching' means making offerings, as was already stated before. To approach good friends without doing so in vain means never being separated from making offerings; practicing the Dharma offering, one is never separated from it. Their practice was the practice of merit, whereas this is the cause of wisdom; therefore they cannot be compared. According to Vasubandhu's commentary, from here downward it shows the fourth: the dharma of quickly realizing bodhi, because through the adornment of abundant merit and virtue it is swiftly perfected. Observing this, it is identical to the comparison in the Lotus Sūtra: true reality and contemplative illumination are the same single vehicle, which is precisely the Middle Way. Under 'great power': first, it serves as a cause of madness, giving rise to the disease of madness; second, even if not mad, it also brings about the fruit of a confused mind; therefore it is not explained in full. Because the sūtra text contains the two words 'mad' and 'confused', they are explained separately. Under 'who is able to speak it': since both the essence of merit and its fruit are difficult to fathom, only the Buddha is able to know them, and beyond him they cannot be fathomed. Vasubandhu's treatise regards this as the fifth: accomplishing great majesty and power, and attaining great, wondrous retribution—namely, the fruits of embracing the Four Heavenly Kings, Śakra, Brahmā, and so forth, because of accomplishing power. This reveals that prior to the bhūmis one is born among those Four Heavenly Kings and so forth, and on the ten bhūmis one attains the fruits of the ten kings and so forth. If upon hearing these matters one's mind becomes confused, it is because those retributions are inconceivable, all being supreme and wondrous, showing that they are not the cognitive realm of deliberative wisdom. The above collectively reveals that within that cultivation, one accomplishes such merit, virtue, karmic practice, and so forth.