四教義 12.6

12.6

Sixth, determining the differing degrees to which various sūtras elucidate the stages of the four teachings: The sudden teaching of the Avataṃsaka only elucidates the stages of the two teachings, distinctive and perfect. The śrāvaka sūtras at the beginning of the gradual teaching only elucidate the stages of the three vehicles of the Tripiṭaka teaching. The Vaipulya Mahāyāna fully employs the four teachings to elucidate stages. The Mahāprajñā[pāramitā Sūtra] only elucidates the stages of the three teachings—shared, distinctive, and perfect. The Lotus Sūtra only elucidates the stages of the opening, demonstrating, awakening, and entering of the one Buddha vehicle of the perfect teaching. All are shared with Mahāyāna, and elucidate the two vehicles as before. But for the stages of the bodhisattva of the shared teaching, it uses the distinctive to connect with the shared, elucidating the four virtues of the Buddha-nature and nirvāṇa. The two vehicles of the Tripiṭaka are as before, but it sets aside the Mahāyāna stages of the Tripiṭaka—the cause of subduing bondages over three asaṃkhyeya kalpas and the fruit of severing bondages in thirty-four minds to enter the two nirvāṇas. Furthermore, the stages of the two vehicles elucidated in the shared teaching and the Tripiṭaka teaching, reaching up to the great nirvāṇa, are both led into the two stages of the distinctive and the perfect. Question: If the Buddha stage of the Tripiṭaka is set aside, how can it say that the arhat, the pratyekabuddha, and the Buddha are like ghee? Answer: These three stages merely exhaust bondages within the realms; this completes the meaning of the past, and is not what is employed in the present nirvāṇa.