因明入正理論疏 1.3

1.3

Since the golden countenance shone in the dream and the jade tablets illuminated the dawn, although the supreme teaching has flourished, this canon had not yet been fully prepared. Only our preceptor, the Great Master of the Three Baskets, whose path ran through the five sciences and whose fame illuminated a thousand generations, lamented that the departure of the Sage had grown ever more distant and grieved that the ice within the mind remained unmelted. He thereupon shook his monk's staff in the central region to depart from the land of the city of enlightenment; he sought teachers in the western regions and went directly to Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa. Trampling upon what past philosophers had never heard, he embraced the extremes of the mind; soaring over what former worthies had not beheld, he penetrated the pivot of inner thoughts. Thereupon, palm leaves were compiled with subtle words, and he returned to his home country with divine footsteps. Once the local languages were translated, the principles were made thoroughly lucid. Ji, having mistakenly joined the ranks of his disciples, rejoices in hearing the truth in the morning even if dying in the evening. Fearing that this path might not be put into practice, I have briefly related and collated an explanation, setting forth the purport of the main guidelines and expounding the essential tenets of the esoteric, in the hope that those who suspend the bright mirror of wisdom will kindly turn their minds to reflect and illuminate it.