肇論新疏 3.33

3.33

There are three intentions in its composition: first, to expound the nameless; second, to quiet divergent views; third, according to the *Liang Biographies of Eminent Monks*, it was also composed out of confusion and lingering sorrow following Kumārajīva's passing. Yun'an says: “To quiet means to put to rest—to put to rest the nihilistic views of wide-open emptiness held by the various traditions.” “Dismiss” means to drive away. Earlier in the text there was no separate account of discourses detached from the world; now it also dismisses them. The meaning is that scholars of that time held that an empty expanse without sages was what lay outside worldly things, or they dismissed the provisional, small-vehicle [teachings] as birth-and-death within the realm and nirvāṇa beyond the realm, and so on. Now, since essence and function are non-dual, what is inside and what is outside? Hence it says below: “To demarcate its regional bounds—is that not vastly remote?”