大乘起信論裂網疏 1.10

1.10

Third, to explain "treatise" (śāstra): It refers to questioning, debating, scrutinising, and analysing, resolving doubts and revealing meaning to enable one to achieve decisive certainty. If by relying on spoken words and written characters it reveals the real meaning, remedies heterodox attachments, distinguishes the marks of cultivating the correct path, and encourages one to practice it, this is "decisive certainty in teaching", which can give rise to the faith of contemplative practice and resemblance through hearing, thinking, and cultivating. If one contemplates and investigates the five skandhas such as form and all dharmas, finding them all to be unestablished, and knows that the deluded moving mind is itself unarisen and unceasing, this is "decisive certainty in practice", which can give rise to the faith of partial realisation from the stage of the pure mind upward. If one attains entry into the aspect of tathatā, forever severing associated and non-associated defilements, and with wisdom corresponding to a single moment of thought suddenly uproots the root of ignorance, this is "decisive certainty in principle", which can give rise to the ultimate faith of the knowledge of all aspects (sarvākārajñatā). Therefore it is called the "Treatise on Awakening Faith in the Mahāyāna" (Mahāyānaśraddhotpādaśāstra). This treatise was composed within six hundred years after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa by the twelfth Western patriarch, the Great Master Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa. It is the comprehensive summary of nature and characteristics (dharmatā and dharmalakṣaṇa); its words are concise and its meaning extensive, truly a definitive Mahāyāna, the mind-seal of the buddhas and patriarchs. If explained according to the fivefold profound meaning: phenomenon and metaphor are its name; the one mind tathatā is its essence; contemplating all deluded thoughts as markless is its central principle; removing doubts, dispelling attachments, and bringing forth pure faith in the Mahāyāna is its function; and the Mahāyāna vaipulya is its doctrinal classification. The first part, explaining the title, is finished.