法界次第初門 3.40

3.40

Explaining the eighteen modes of emptiness next after the nine kinds of dhyāna is because the former nine kinds serve precisely to illustrate further the stages of the profound and vast pāramitā of dhyāna; now the eighteen modes of emptiness sequentially accomplish the prajñāpāramitā, the wondrous excellence of wisdom illuminating and understanding without apprehension and without attachment, hence they are clarified next. In these eighteen, what is generally called 'emptiness' means 'non-existence.' Because these eighteen kinds of existence are non-existent, it is called 'emptiness.' If a bodhisattva, beginning from the initial practice of self-nature dhyāna through to the pure and pristine dhyāna, although having the functions of great merit, superknowledges, and wisdom, yet dhyāna-concentration is a teaching of portals, gradations, and stages; if one does not skillfully illuminate and disperse them with the wisdom of the eighteen modes of emptiness, one might, within the various dhyānas and samādhis realized, become stuck in any one among the eighteen existent dharmas, and then would not attain unhindered liberation and unrestrained autonomy. Therefore, one must cultivate the eighteen modes of emptiness, illuminating and understanding without abiding and without attachment. When sūtras and treatises explain emptiness, their expansion, contraction, names, and numbers differ: sometimes for brevity, the eighteen modes of emptiness are combined into only fourteen, or into eleven, or into seven, down to three, two, or one; sometimes for breadth, the eighteen modes of emptiness are expanded into twenty, twenty-five, down to immeasurable modes of emptiness. Here, using the eighteen modes of emptiness in a middle manner to dispel all forms of existence completely, with none remaining, all pāramitās, dhyāna-concentrations, samādhis, and ten thousand practices are entirely purified.