四明尊者教行錄 4.32

4.32

Question 7: The commentary on the chapter 'Discrimination of Merits' says: Or perhaps one person has eight turns of increase; or perhaps one life, or eight lives, or countless lives; or one thought, or eight thoughts, or countless thoughts (and so on). Doubters say: The fourth fascicle of the commentary says: The śrāvakas of the three cycles have not yet severed ignorance, and have three faculties of sharpness and dullness. If genuine cultivation and the essence are revealed, then there is no disparity. From the first abode upward, when conditional cultivation is further aroused, there is no longer superiority or inferiority; when genuine cultivation and the essence interfuse, how could there be differences? (and so on). Now why is there a disparity of one thought, eight thoughts, and even countless lives? If so, how can one discuss attaining wondrous awakening in the body born of father and mother? If you accept that it is attained, the sūtra regards the dragon girl as attaining it swiftly, yet the Great Master determined it as the eight aspects at the first abode. Since there is a principle of swift attainment, why did the dragon girl not attain wondrous awakening? Moreover, the Awakening of Faith harmonizes the two accounts of length and brevity across the various sūtras, taking three asaṃkhyeya kalpas alone as the realization of principle; Tiantai must not contradict Aśvaghoṣa. If you do not accept it, since there are eight turns of increase and decrease in a single thought, why not accept forty-two turns in a single lifetime? How must the swift path of the perfect and sudden necessarily pass through so many kalpas?