四明尊者教行錄 4.33

4.33

Answer: The Commentary to the fourth fascicle states: 'When the three faculties enter the initial stage of abiding, are there still sharp and dull ones?' The Subcommentary states: 'After these same three faculties have entered the stage of abiding, are they still named three?' Now, based on the Subcommentary author's intended question: after entering the stage of abiding, are Śāriputra and the others still superior faculties, while Kāśyapa, Pūrṇa, and the others remain intermediate and inferior? The Commentary answers: 'When the essence of true cultivation is manifested, there is no disparity.' The meaning of this answer is: after the three faculties have realized the principle, even if they give rise to conditioned cultivation, it will never be based on the previous [hierarchy where] superior faculties remain superior and intermediate faculties remain intermediate. Thus we know that it is said that true cultivation has no disparity in order to adapt to faculties seeking certitude. But if one determines for oneself that the Dharmakāya increases the path and decreases rebirth, how could there not be slowness and speed? Hence there are disparities such as one thought-moment, eight thought-moments, three lifetimes, and eight lifetimes. Furthermore, regarding the question about [attaining] wondrous enlightenment in a single lifetime: since the Commentary mentions eight increments in a single thought-moment, and the Suvarṇaprabhāsa also mentions the ten bhūmis in the body of birth, using this to verify that realizing wondrous enlightenment in this very body is not entirely absent. It is only because the passage in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra stating that 'at the initial generating of the mind, one immediately attains right enlightenment' precisely refers to the eight phases of the initial stage of abiding, while worldly people mostly take it to be the Dharmakāya of wondrous enlightenment, thereby entirely missing the cultivation and realization of the forty-one stages. Therefore, whenever our school judges the eight phases, it mostly places them within the stage of the non-arising. Moreover, regarding the text on the dragon girl's cultivation and realization, and the phase of her attaining buddhahood in the southern realm, it is difficult to definitively determine higher or lower, because generating the mind and ultimate [attainment] are not distinct. As explained elsewhere, upon first ascending to the bhūmis and the stages of abiding, the three causes unfold. Having attained the non-arising, one then naturally realizes the subsequent stages. Furthermore, the dragon girl, with the retributive body of an animal, immediately realized this stage and was able to display the eight phases, benefiting beings, which sufficiently reveals swift realization. If one relies on the Awakening of Faith, since it generally expounds the three teachings of the Mahāyāna, the passage that definitively speaks of the number of kalpas is likely the meaning of the pedagogical path of the separate teaching. If it is said that Aśvaghoṣa and Tiantai must not contradict each other: just as when Tiantai judged the predictions of the Origin Section, it entirely refrained from using Vasubandhu's original treatise. If even that original treatise was subject to acceptance and rejection, how much more so a treatise that generally expounds [the teachings]?