能顯中邊慧日論 2.12.4

2.12.4

According to the intention of this passage, the cause is merit and wisdom, and the fruit encompasses wisdom and cessation; therefore, the cause spans the three periods of time, while the fruit is both temporal and non-temporal. If you say that tathatā is the remote cause, then the cause would also span the temporal and non-temporal; how could it only say 'the three periods of time'? The thirty-third chapter says: 'The buddhadhātu of sentient beings is like empty space; because it does not belong to the three periods of time, and because the buddhadhātu is permanent, it is not included in the three periods of time.' Furthermore, the Buddha himself answered: 'My cause is impermanent, and the fruit is permanent. Within the cause there are remote and proximate, and the cause spans the three periods of time.' Now someone takes their own ordinary mind to overturn the Buddha's teaching, saying that the remote cause is permanent and [the proximate is] impermanent, falsely contrasting proximate and remote causes and fruits to divide permanence and impermanence. Moreover, since you yourself maintain that tathatā produces dharmas, why can it only produce remotely as a remote cause, but cannot produce proximately as a proximate cause? Since the principle of tathatā is permanent, if it cannot act as a proximate cause, its remote operation would also be void. Its essential nature is unmoving; if it could remotely act as a cause, it would also do so proximately, because its substance has no difference before and after. The Buddha stated that the janaka-hetu is impermanent, yet you contradict the Buddha's statement by calling it permanent. The Buddha taught the non-existence of gotra [in some], yet you violate the Ārya's teaching by asserting gotra [in all]. This is taking one's own intellectual view as correct while treating the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as mistaken. How is this different from waiting for rabbit horns to strike Mount Meru, or plucking turtle hairs to fill the Bohai Sea? How could that ever be achieved? How can you not reflect on this!