註華嚴經題法界觀門頌 1.286

1.286

Back then I did not shrink from penetrating the cloudy path; / Looking back on it now, it causes a sorrow to kill a man.
This verse [means that] the Supreme Sage appeared in the world for the sake of the one great causal condition: he came because sentient beings' conditions were ripe, and departed because sentient beings' conditions were exhausted. Not only nowadays, but throughout kalpas past, because those clinging to annihilation and permanence were difficult to transform and cross over, he intricately devised various skillful means to guide sentient beings, causing them to leave all attachments behind. His work being accomplished, he later entered nirvāṇa, and only then realized that benefiting beings had wasted his effort. Or perhaps, most are coming worthy people who thoroughly penetrate the two schools of nature and characteristics, marvelously reaching the One Vehicle of the perfect and sudden, and seeing the many gates of provisional and real skillful means, look up and sigh over the ancient sages, saying: How much effort was wasted!