廬山蓮宗寶鑑 6.26

6.26

The Buddha said: "Not having been delivered oneself, yet first desiring to deliver others, is the aspiration of a bodhisattva; having already perfected self-awakening, then awakening others, is the Tathāgata's responding to the world." Therefore, our ancestral master of the Lotus School established the single gate of buddhānusmṛti, matching practice and understanding, benefiting oneself and benefiting others, possessing methods to transform beings and retaining principle in instructing people. He was called a Guide, dedicated to demonstrating and guiding people through the buddhānusmṛti-samādhi, universally causing them to transcend the world. Therefore, the teaching spread throughout the world, and all people looked up to it.
Teachers of today do not comprehend its Way and are confined to names and marks. They gather many disciples but do not cultivate real practice; they bear the name of a teacher of humans in vain, having no Dharma to teach people, yet they desire people to respect and revere them. Lacking virtue while receiving people's respect is truly shameful. A sūtra says: "Whoever wishes to deliver others must first seek to deliver themselves." The Vimalakīrti[-sūtra] says: "If one cannot cure one's own illness, how can one cure the illness of others?" Furthermore, the Hell Retribution Sūtra says: "If one is not pure oneself and teaches others to be pure, there is no such possibility." The Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa says: "For example, suppose two people each have relatives drowning in water. One person, overcome with distress, enters the water directly to save them; because he lacks skillful means, both drown together. The other person possesses skillful means: he goes and gets a boat or raft, boards it to rescue and pick them up, and all are delivered from the peril of drowning." Therefore, if one who is a teacher of others has the mind to deliver people but lacks the wisdom to deliver people, how can they sit upright with folded hands, with an empty belly and a haughty mind, unwilling to draw near to an enlightened master, knowing only to arrogantly receive people's prostrations, respect, and offerings? Because they crave empty reputation, they truly plant the foundation of disaster. It is like an ordinary man falsely styling himself an emperor and bringing destruction upon himself. This is what was referred to earlier as rescuing people without skillful means; how could one act so recklessly?
In general, for one who is a teacher of others wishing to deliver disciples, one must contemplate the causal stage of cultivation of the buddhas and patriarchs from of old, the source and flow of their attainment of the Way, the authentic seal of the transmission of the lineage, and the Dharma gate of buddhānusmṛti. Investigating each one clearly, personally believing and personally practicing, cultivating each one and perfecting each one, first benefiting oneself and then benefiting others—this is boarding the boat of Amitābha's great vow-power to rescue and receive those drowning in the sea of suffering; is it not fitting that both should be benefited and saved? This is what is called awakening later-awakened ones by means of those who awakened first. Personally believing in this Dharma gate, one also teaches people to believe in this Dharma gate; personally practicing this Way, one also teaches people to practice this Way; personally vowing to be reborn in the Pure Land, one also teaches people to make vows to be reborn in the Pure Land; personally seeing the Amitābha of one's fundamental nature, one also teaches people to see the Amitābha of their fundamental nature. Applying the mind in this way, is this not performing the practice of a bodhisattva?
Master and disciples each receive the correct cause and together practice the correct path, progressively transforming and delivering all living beings to the utmost limits of the future, all awakening to the Buddha vehicle and together escaping birth and death. How could the power of their merit be easily measured? Functioning as a teacher of others in this way, what dissatisfaction could there be? If it is not so, delusion and awakening are two different paths, and the retributions of the correct and the heterodox differ. One might say: inside the cave of the golden-haired one, a lion is born; beneath the wild fox's crag, a fox emerges.