華嚴一乘法界圖 1.50

1.50

Question: Does a single gate exhaustively embrace the ten or not? Answer: It is both exhaustive and not exhaustive. Why is this? Because when it must be exhaustive, it is exhaustive, and when it must not be exhaustive, it is not exhaustive. What is the meaning of this? Explaining the one and the many in terms of a single phenomenon, it is exhaustive; explaining the one and the many in terms of different phenomena, it is not exhaustive. In the text, within a single phenomenon, the meanings of one and many are not identical to each other, which is precisely the many in the one; in terms of phenomena, the many is precisely the one. Guarding against errors through the four propositions, neither failing nor departing from virtue, it can be understood by analogy. Different phenomena are also analogous to this.