宗鏡錄 77.9

77.9

答。體一是真。名。二是假法。因情立。真。以智明。情。智自分。真。原不動。不可定同。不壞世諦故。不可定異。不失真諦故。涅槃經云。明與無明。愚人為二。智者了達。其性無二。無二之性。即是實性。古德約十法界釋云。愚人者。九界之愚也。愚人取相。見一切法。法性隨其取相心。悉無明也。如寒谷千年堅氷。未曾作水也。智者。佛界之智也。圓觀行人開佛眼者。見同古佛也。圓眼所見。無明本元是清淨法性。如太陽常照海水。未曾作氷也。氷水性一隨緣成二。一不守性。恒自隨緣。雖復隨緣。不壞自性。況法性無明。亦何定一。亦何定異。則不隨事而失體。非共非分。不守性而任緣。亦同亦別。

Answer: The substance being one is real; the names being two are provisional. Dharmas are established on account of feeling; reality is illumined by means of wisdom. Feeling and wisdom naturally divide, while reality is originally unmoving. They cannot be definitively identical, because the conventional truth is not destroyed; they cannot be definitively different, because the ultimate truth is not lost. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra states: "Knowledge and ignorance: the foolish consider them to be two; the wise thoroughly understand that their nature is not two. The nature that is not two is precisely the real nature." An ancient worthy explained this in terms of the ten dharmadhātus, saying: "The 'foolish' refers to the folly of the nine realms. The foolish grasp at characteristics and see all dharmas; dharmatā, following their minds that grasp at characteristics, is entirely ignorance—like thousand-year solid ice in a cold valley that has never become water. The 'wise' refers to the wisdom of the Buddha realm. Practitioners of the perfect contemplation who open the Buddha eye see identically to the ancient Buddhas. What the perfect eye sees is that ignorance is fundamentally pure dharmatā—like the sun constantly shining upon the seawater, which has never become ice. The natures of ice and water are one, yet following conditions they become two. The one does not preserve its nature, constantly and spontaneously following conditions. Even though it follows conditions, it does not destroy its own nature." How much more so with dharmatā and ignorance: how could they be definitively one, or how could they be definitively different? Thus, without losing substance in accordance with phenomena, they are neither unified nor divided; without preserving nature while according with conditions, they are both identical and distinct.