六祖大師法寶壇經 1.110

1.110

The monk Zhidao was a native of Nanhai in Guangzhou. He requested instruction, saying, "Since leaving the household, I have read the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra for over ten years without understanding its great meaning. I wish the Upādhyāya would grant me your instruction."
The Master said, "Where are you not clear?"
He said, "'All conditioned things are impermanent, they are the dharma of arising and ceasing; when arising and ceasing have ceased, the bliss of quiescent extinction appears.' This is where my doubt lies."
The Master said, "How do you doubt it?"
He said, "All sentient beings have two bodies: the physical body and the dharmakāya. The physical body is impermanent and has arising and ceasing; the dharmakāya is permanent and has no knowledge or sensation. When the sūtra says, 'When arising and ceasing have ceased, the bliss of quiescent extinction appears,' I do not understand: which body enters quiescent extinction, and which body experiences bliss? If it is the physical body, when the physical body perishes, the four elements scatter and it is entirely suffering; suffering cannot be called bliss. If the dharmakāya enters quiescent extinction, it would be identical to grasses, trees, tiles, and stones; who would experience bliss? Furthermore, the nature of dharmas is the substance of arising and ceasing, and the five aggregates are the function of arising and ceasing: one substance and five functions, with arising and ceasing being constant. Arising means function arising from substance; ceasing means gathering function back into substance. If they are allowed to arise again, then classes of sentient beings will be neither interrupted nor extinguished; if they are not allowed to arise again, they will permanently return to quiescent extinction, identical to insentient things. If it is like this, then all dharmas are restrained and subdued by nirvāṇa, unable even to arise; what bliss could there be?"
The Master said, "You are a disciple of Śākya; why do you practice the non-Buddhist heterodox views of annihilation and permanence to critique the teaching of the Supreme Vehicle? According to what you have said, there is a dharmakāya separate from the physical body, and one seeks quiescent extinction apart from arising and ceasing. Furthermore, you infer that nirvāṇa is permanent bliss and say that there is a body to experience it. This is clinging stingily to saṃsāra and being deeply attached to worldly pleasures. You must now understand that because all deluded people mistake the confluence of the five aggregates for the characteristics of their own body and discriminate all dharmas as external dust-like objects, loving life and hating death, shifting from thought to thought, unaware that these are illusory and false, vainly undergoing the cycle of transmigration—turning the permanent bliss of nirvāṇa instead into the characteristic of suffering, and rushing about seeking all day long—out of pity for them the Buddha revealed the true bliss of nirvāṇa. In an instant there is no characteristic of arising; in an instant there is no characteristic of ceasing; there is no further arising and ceasing that can be extinguished, and this is quiescent extinction manifest before you. When it manifests before you, there is also no measure of its manifesting; this is called permanent bliss. In this bliss there is no experiencer, nor is there any non-experiencer; how could there be the name of 'one substance and five functions'? Much less could one say that nirvāṇa restrains and subdues all dharmas, causing them never to arise. This is slandering the Buddha and disparaging the Dharma. Listen to my verse: