摩訶止觀 3.245

3.245

If [we take] the distant past as the initial practice: having previously generated the bodhimind, they long ago knew the eternally abiding; terrified of birth and death, they regressed from the great and adopted the small. Prince Fatian and the retrogressing bodhisattvas in the Nirvāṇa-sūtra, from the beginning onward, took refuge in the single-essence Three Jewels and cultivated precepts and goodness. There is the receiving of the dharma, but no abandoning of the dharma; because the mind is inexhaustible, the precepts are also inexhaustible; all precepts and goodness are perfumed by this. For instance, the great earth secretly benefits trees; the buds and sprouts of the trees all reach completion. The refuges and precepts of the Small Vehicle do not depart from the bodhisattva precepts, and the power of the bodhisattva precepts can accomplish them—such is this meaning. If one does not take the initial practice to know the eternal, the karmavācanā for the Tripiṭaka refuges and precepts would all be unaccomplished. If one makes this interpretation, there is no contradiction between the meanings of the two sūtras of the great and small.