天台四教儀 1.53

1.53

Next, the perfect teaching is explained. "Perfect" means perfect and wondrous, perfect and full, perfect and complete, perfect and sudden; hence it is named the "perfect teaching." That is to say, perfect subduing, perfect faith, perfect severing, perfect practice, perfect rank, perfect sovereign adornment, and perfect establishment of sentient beings; what the various Mahāyāna sūtras and treatises explain as the Buddha's realm, not shared by the ranks of the three vehicles, all belongs entirely to this teaching. The four words "opening, displaying, awakening, and entering" in the Lotus Sūtra correspond to the abodes, practices, dedications, and grounds of the perfect teaching. Regarding these forty ranks, the Avataṃsaka says: "At the moment of first generating the aspiration, one then accomplishes correct enlightenment; all bodies of wisdom do not depend on the awakening of others; the pure and wondrous Dharma body serenely responds to all." This explains the forty-two ranks of the perfect [teaching]. The Vimalakīrti Sūtra says: "In a campaka grove, one smells no other fragrance; those who enter this room smell only the fragrance of the merit of all Buddhas." It also says: "Entering the Dharma gate of non-duality." The Prajñā explains the supreme vehicle. The Nirvāṇa explains the five practices of the one mind. Again, a sūtra says: "If someone bathes in the great ocean, they have already used the water of all rivers." Again: "The dragon king Sāgara pours down torrential rain thick as axle-trees; only the great ocean can receive it, while other lands cannot endure it." Again: "If ten thousand kinds of incense are pounded into a ball, though one burns only a single speck of dust, it completely possesses all fragrances." Instances such as these all belong to the perfect teaching.