觀心論疏 2.11

2.11

Now, next, to answer the previous question: 'Why use the four tetralemmas of self and other to explain the eight negations in order to expound the sūtra?': Now I first explain the line 'non-arising'. Why? Sentient beings in all their delusions invariably grasp at and cling to the three realms and the twenty-five states of existence, and give rise to the four inversions. Arbitrarily postulating a spiritual self, they give rise to the three poisons and the eighty-four thousand afflictions and delusions; with ignorance conditioning volitional formations, down to aging and death, suffering and its origin revolve, and birth-and-death is vast and boundless; having died, they are born again, and having been born, they return to death, vainly undergoing the severe sufferings of the three evil destinies without knowing any rest. But Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna, pitying this host of the deluded, composed the treatise to expound the sūtra and show sentient beings that the original source of all dharmas is pure, without arising and without ceasing, causing them to return to the root and go back to the source; therefore, he said that all dharmas do not arise, and so forth. Yet sentient beings have clung to their attachments for a long time and are unable immediately to awaken to the principle of non-arising. Therefore, the outsider rescues [his view], saying: 'In the world one currently sees all the myriad things—pots, robes, pillars, the earth, the spiritual self, and so forth. How can the author of the treatise refute them, saying that they do not exist?' The author of the treatise says: 'How can one believe what you see with the eyes of foolish oxen and sheep and thereupon call it existent? Like a diseased eye seeing flowers in the sky, how can a diseased eye be sufficient proof?' Because such sentient beings are unable to attain faith and awakening, the author of the treatise examines, refutes, and thoroughly interrogates them one by one with reference to the four tetralemmas of self and other, exhausting their sentiment and taking the principle to its utmost, so that they only then awaken to the principle of non-arising; hence it is said, 'using the four tetralemmas of self and other to explain and establish the eight negations'.