起信論疏筆削記 7.22

7.22

"Free from speech" means because it cannot be spoken. "Severed from deliberation" means because it cannot be thought. Because the preceding text said: "Free from the mark of names, free from the mark of mental cognition," it now concludes thus. However, all sentient beings from beginningless time have grasped at marks and been confused about the nature, unable to identify delusion and converge with the real; though acting all day long, they are not aware of it themselves. Therefore, it now indicates the real in terms of arising and ceasing. Practitioners of the Mahāyāna must go all day without eating and all night without sleeping to ponder this matter. When has there ever been a time without noble and ordinary, circumstantial and direct [retribution], emptiness and form? Where is the real essence not constantly manifest? What single dharma is not made by the nature? What single dharma is not empty and quiescent in essence? Moreover, how could empty dharmas ever be separated from the real nature? If one does not agree with this explanation, one will fall into annihilationism or eternalism, and there is no truth in it. Therefore, whenever the śāstra reveals the real in each section, it always speaks of "all dharmas."