宗鏡錄 28.14

28.14

Answer: There are two kinds of faith. First, if correct faith is firm and solid, clearly understood without doubt, rational contemplation distinct, and vehicles and precepts both urgently maintained—if like this, then in a single lifetime it can be accomplished; who would speak of regression? Second, if it is faith dependent on penetration, where the power of contemplation is coarse and unstable, habit-energy heavy, and conditions powerful, then encountering circumstances one immediately regresses. As the Huayan lun says: "As in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, having heard the two words 'eternal abiding,' one does not fall into hell even for seven lifetimes; and as the Huayan Sūtra says, even if one hears the name of the Tathāgata and the Dharma he expounds without generating faith and understanding, it still forms a seed and must attain liberation up to the point of becoming a Buddha—why then do the sūtras say that at the sixth mental dwelling and from the faith stage of an ordinary person, there is still said to be regression? How is this intention reconciled?" The explanation states: "Within the ten faiths, superior understanding is not yet completed. Having not attained, one claims to have attained, thereby generating arrogance, not drawing near good friends, and not respecting the worthy and good. Due to arrogance and negligence, dwelling long among humans and devas, bad karma then arises, which can accomplish karma of the great hells. If one possesses faith without arrogance, always seeking superior friends, then one will not have this fault. If in the provisional teaching, at the sixth mental dwelling there can be a stage of regression; in the real teaching, for those who linger, they are rebuked to cause them to advance in cultivation. Just as Śāriputra is a manifest śrāvaka and not a real śrāvaka; what he does as expedients are all to deliver sentient beings and cause them to advance and spur themselves on. Like in the provisional teaching, at the sixth mental dwelling one can speak of actual regression. Why? Because in the provisional teaching, the three grades of the worthy before the stages (bhūmi) have altogether not seen the Path; the actions they cultivate are all conditioned, and whatever avidyā they have is merely suppressed. If one's effort is not strong, regression then arises. If suppression is forceful, one also does not regress and lose it. Just as a snake has poison, yet due to the power of a mantra, the poison cannot arise. One need only plant the mind of faith within the Buddha-Dharma, be humble without arrogance, respect and follow the worthy and good, constantly harbor loving-kindness and forbearance in mind toward all evil people, consult and receive what has not been heard from all those superior to oneself, faithfully practice without falsity the superior Dharma heard, eradicate all falsity according to the teachings, and constantly be diligent without rest in the path to the three bodhis. As the Dharma for human life, the Dharma appropriately is like this. As long as one lives without growing evil, what need is there to worry about regression?" The Huayan shu says: "'Those whose deep-minded faith and understanding are constantly pure' means that only when one believes that kleśa is bodhi is it constantly pure. From matching the original nature, one gives rise to the bodhi-mind; originally being Buddha, there is nothing further to advance toward—as if in empty space, to what place could one regress?"