摩訶止觀 5.249

5.249

As for specific refutation: the practitioner uses calming and contemplation to refute the three provisionalities of conditioned arising, finds no svabhāva or characteristics, and enters absorption into stillness, not perceiving inner or outer, without before or after, devoid of relative opposites. Abiding quietly in absorption, or suddenly losing body and mind so that everything is entirely purified, they thereupon give rise to this no-mind. They think to themselves that they have attained the calming and contemplation of non-arising, that their concentration and wisdom are already accomplished, and they give rise to attachment to views. Attached to this thought of emptiness, not even the buddhas can convert them. Why can they not convert them? Because by discerning the mind and calculating, they have given rise to a fraction of subtle concentration and produced a fraction of understanding of emptiness. This is merely the mental object of the view of emptiness corresponding with the mind; what does it have to do with non-arising? The Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa distinguishes tīrthikas from the Buddhadharma when both contemplate emptiness: how do they differ? Tīrthikas crave and cling to the wisdom that contemplates emptiness, which is precisely the object of emptiness that arose earlier, taking it to be nirvāṇa. There is then one who is able to contemplate, and this one who is able to contemplate turns into the view of selfhood; because of the view of selfhood, there are the ten sharp and dull proclivities and on up to the eighty-eight [proclivities], and birth-and-death is vast and boundless, as explained before. Faults such as these all arise from the object of emptiness; obstructing the truth and losing the Path, how could one accord with nirvāṇa? This is called a tīrthika's contemplation of emptiness.