肇論疏 3.17

3.17

Second is the original intention of composing the treatise. Because Yao Xing's purport was profound and abstruse, he composed the treatise to clarify and set it forth. "It can serve as a master for those seniors and rescue eminent scholars": "seniors" refers to senior-virtue monks; "eminent scholars" refers to laymen of high talent. This means Yao Xing's words can serve as a master to senior-virtue [monks] and can rescue highly talented laymen who cling to delusions. "Fearing that those of the class of verbal titles might not yet fully grasp Your Majesty's intention": "verbal titles" refers to those who cling to conventional names and titles; because the principle they see is subtle and the words concise, they have not fully grasped Yao Xing's intention, and so he composed the treatise to clarify it. "Hoping to model it on Confucius's composition of the Ten Wings for the Changes": shu means to hope. Confucius composed the Ten Wings to assist in completing the Way of the Changes; I now compose Ten Expositions to assist in completing the intention of Sovereign Yao. Regarding the Ten Wings, an ancient authority gives two explanations. The first says: Eight Trigrams is one, Explaining the Trigrams is two, Order of the Trigrams is three, Miscellaneous Trigrams is four, Hexagram Statements is five, Line Statements is six, Judgments is seven, Image Statements is eight, Appended Statements is nine, and Commentary on the Words is ten. The second says: the Changes has upper and lower canonical texts, each having Judgments, Image Statements, and Hexagram Statements, which make six; Commentary on the Words is seven, Appended Statements is eight, Explaining the Trigrams is nine, and Miscellaneous Separated Trigrams is ten. "How could I covet profuse words?" This means he did not seek many words. Mao Chang's Commentary on the Odes says, "Feng means luxuriant." "Planning to broadly display the hidden purport": calculating to broadly display Sovereign Yao's hidden purport. The treatise contains nine refutations and ten expositions: "refutation" means objection; "exposition" means reply. The Shuowen says, "Yan means the flowing of water." The meaning here is the same. "Extensively gathering diverse scriptures to rely on proofs and establish metaphors": broadly gathering diverse texts to serve as evidence and metaphors; it can also mean adducing metaphors to prove and accomplish it. "To respectfully set forth Your Majesty's principle of the Nameless": to praise and set forth the principle of the namelessness of nirvāṇa. "How could I say it reaches into the divine mind?" He states of himself that he cannot reach into or access Sovereign Yao's mind, nor can he fully exhaust the principle to match the Buddha's intention. One edition says: "Reaching into is a colloquial expression." "I merely use it to imitate and model the profound gate": "imitate" means to take as a standard; "model" means to pattern after. He patterns after the gate of the profound principle, distributing and proclaiming it to students.