起信論疏筆削記 3.22

3.22

In "Conventional and substantial..." below, the third is encompassing the four dharmas. Since the two explanations above each take principle and teaching as their standard, one must not take either exclusively. Here both are comprehensively included, because sound alone cannot express meaning, while names, sentences, and phonemes alone have no distinct substance; only when all four dharmas are accepted does the substance of the teaching come into being. Just as water together with motion can only then move a boat, between these two one cannot choose only one. If a person simply emits a sound without uttering words and sentences, what could it express? And if there were no sound, what would names and the like rely on? Hence, both are taken together here. Thus the Kośa states: "The Munindra's spoken store of teachings / numbered eighty thousand; / its substance (the substance of the teaching) was speech (sound) or name (name and sentence), / subsumed under this material (sound) and compositional (name and sentence) aggregate."