觀心論疏 2.32

2.32

Answer: Now this should be explained through a metaphor: first, like an actual form outside a mirror; second, like a reflected image inside a mirror. Would worldly people not say that the form outside the mirror is truly existent, while the image inside the mirror is non-existent and empty? A practitioner who undertakes the Tripiṭaka teaching contemplates the phenomena of body and mind as being like the actual form outside the mirror; merely because they are shifted by the three marks [of conditioned phenomena], they are impermanent, suffering, empty, and non-self. One who performs this contemplation attains awakening to the principle of impermanence, suffering, and emptiness. But now, a practitioner of the shared teaching embodies the knowledge that body and mind are unreal and empty just like the image inside the mirror. However, is an image in a mirror not empty in its very identity as an image—why must one extinguish the image before it is empty? Therefore the sūtra says: 'Form itself is emptiness; it is not that the extinction of form makes it empty.' Form is by its own nature empty; thus there is no original extinction of the mirror's image. Hence the sūtra says: 'Originally not arisen, now there is no extinction.' Because this contemplation is both skillful and subtle, it is called the contemplation of embodying phenomena as non-arising and skillful crossing over. If the mirror metaphor is thus, the analogies of dreams, illusions, shadows, and echoes can be understood accordingly. Compared with the Tripiṭaka [teaching], it is only people of sharp faculties in the three vehicles who are capable of cultivating this contemplation of skillful crossing over. Therefore the sūtra says: 'Understanding the cause of suffering as having no cause of suffering, there is the true noble truth.' Since it says 'understanding the cause of suffering as having no cause of suffering,' what afflictions are there to be severed such that there is the true noble truth? This is precisely obtaining the two nirvāṇas, as the verse says: 'The three vehicles do not sever fetters, / yet attain entry into the two nirvāṇas.'