止觀輔行傳弘決 10.4

10.4

Below "if a person...," it clarifies harm and benefit. As for "being able to regulate and adjust oneself...," etc., it means that investigating the sūtras and treatises and meeting good spiritual friends both enable one to self-regulate the error of clinging to views. This only eliminates the clinging nature, not the substance of the view. Since views depend on dhyāna, those who manifest dhyāna are few; attaining dhyāna and manifesting views while also being able to regulate oneself is therefore called "hard to obtain." Nurturing views to examine the mind has precisely this meaning. As for "true Dharma...," etc., it cites the passage of the Dazhidulun to substantiate the person hard to obtain: the true Dharma substantiates the sūtras and treatises investigated; the speaker substantiates the good spiritual friend; the listeners substantiate the person who self-regulates. The true Dharma and the speaker are already hard to obtain in themselves, how much more so that one clinging to views becomes a listener receiving the true Dharma, entering correctness through deviance and altering clinging to examine the mind—this is called hard to obtain. As for "dense forest...," etc., ye means to pull; it can also be written with the hand radical. The Zilin states: "To pull while lying down." Birth-and-death is like a dense forest, deviant schemes are like "crooked wood." Because of not meeting a master and not regulating oneself, the mind of views does not cease, making it difficult to emerge from birth-and-death, like crooked wood. Therefore, the thirty-eighth fascicle of the Dazhidulun states: "If the mind is deviant and crooked, it is difficult to obtain escape. Just as pulling wood in a dense forest, the crooked piece is difficult to bring out."