四明尊者教行錄 3.50

3.50

Answer: Truly it is because the gradual and sudden Dharma gates are fundamentally non-dual in substance, and the capacities of the small and the great are originally without difference in principle. It is just that encountering different perfumings results in different liberations. Now that the various gods awaken to the great, how could that be isolated? Upon examination, they must have cultivated the great vehicle's contemplative wisdom in past lives by means of the small vehicle's truth-realms, and now, hearing their original realm, their past seeds are triggered. It is like placing poison beforehand into curd and consuming it; consuming curd again later will then be able to kill a person. Yet because the Tathāgata knows capacities and knows the time, liberating beings in accordance with their maturation, he merely uses the four truths of arising and ceasing to respond to the two conditions of small and great; this is precisely the manifest indeterminate teaching. Objection: In the Deer Park, it was only said that the gods attained the purity of the Dharma eye. Only upon reaching the Prajñā assembly was it indicated that they attained the patient cognition of non-arising. If so, the śrāvakas and others did not know that the gods directly aroused the aspiration for the Great Path; based on this, does it not become the meaning of the secret teaching? Answer: Recently I have seen many scholars advocate this view, but when questioned about their rationale, their words have no source. Moreover, the secret teaching refers to fully expounding both gradual and sudden teachings, addressing both small and great capacities respectively, where each does not hear the other—only then is it called secret. It does not mean that those receiving small benefit being unaware of those receiving great benefit constitutes secret. If we speak of the characteristics of the secret teaching in the Deer Park, as the Dazhidulun says, what the bodhisattvas saw was that immeasurable asaṃkhyeyas of people attained the two vehicles, and immeasurable asaṃkhyeyas of people attained the patient cognition of non-arising, and so forth. In the present case, for the eighty thousand gods only the small was expounded, and they saw and heard identically with the śrāvakas; what secrecy could there be? Furthermore, the Great Master explicitly designated this as the manifest indeterminate teaching; how could one not believe it?