止觀輔行傳弘決 2.42

2.42

Regarding "Pilinda still had pride": when he was crossing a river, the current was swift and hard to cross, so he scolded it, saying: "Little servant-girl, halt your flow!" The river god grew angry and went to the Buddha to complain, saying: "Pilinda verbally abused me." The Buddha ordered Pilindavatsa to come and repent to the river god. Pilinda called out: "Little servant-girl, come; I will repent to you." The crowd laughed, saying: "He repents yet curses again." The Buddha asked the river god: "Did you see whether Pilinda joined his palms?" It replied: "I saw it completely." The Buddha said: "That he had no pride when repenting yet uttered these words—you should know that this person was a brahmin for five hundred lifetimes. Furthermore, he saw that in a past life the river god had been his servant-girl, and he was always haughty and laughed at others. It was merely a habit of speech from the past." / Regarding "Śāriputra gave rise to anger": at that time Rāhula was walking behind the Buddha. The Buddha asked Rāhula: "Why are you so emaciated?" Rāhula replied to the Buddha in verse: "If one eats oil, one gains strength; if one eats ghee, one gains a fine complexion; eating hemp dregs and wild greens leaves one without complexion or strength. The Greatly Virtuous World-Honoured One surely knows this himself." The Buddha asked Rāhula: "Who is the senior monk in this assembly?" Rāhula replied: "My preceptor Śāriputra." The Buddha said: "Śāriputra eats impure food." When Śāriputra heard these words passed on to him, he immediately vomited up the food and made this vow: "From now on, I will never again accept an invitation." Then King Prasenajit, Sudatta, and others went to Śāriputra's place: "The Buddha does not accept invitations without good reason; now that you do not accept invitations, how can we obtain pure faith?" Śāriputra related the Buddha's rebuke to the king. The king reported this to the Buddha, and the Buddha ordered him to accept invitations again, but he still refused to accept. The Buddha said: "This person's mind is firm and cannot be turned back. Formerly, he was a snake that harmed a king; a physician captured it and ordered it to suck out its venom. If it did not suck it out, it would have to enter a fire. It thought: 'I have already discharged my venom; how could I suck it back in?' and straightway entered the fire to die." Because wholesome and unwholesome do not obstruct one another, even upon attaining the ultimate fruition there are still lingering unwholesome traits. / From "It is like" downward, an analogy is raised. In great space there is neither brightness nor darkness; brightness and darkness pertain to form, and thus they displace each other. In the great space of the dharma-nature, there is fundamentally neither wholesome nor unwholesome; it is the ordinary person's sentimental view that wholesome and unwholesome displace each other. Therefore, this is applied provisionally to the Hīnayāna and all ordinary people. That the two dharmas of wholesome and unwholesome do not obstruct each other is because their essential nature is fundamentally non-dual; only one who comprehends this reveals bodhi. For this reason, one is made to cultivate calming and contemplation with regard to the unwholesome; comprehending that the unwholesome is without unwholesomeness and seeing the essential nature of the unwholesome, one thereby knows that this essential nature is fundamentally without wholesome or unwholesome.