宗鏡錄 91.17

91.17

Answer: That a bodhisattva takes on suffering on behalf of sentient beings is due to the power of great compassion and skillful means. It is simply because sentient beings deludedly grasp and do not comprehend that the substance of karma arises from delusion, having no way to emerge from suffering. The bodhisattva teaches them to cultivate the two gates of śamatha and vipaśyanā without ceasing for even a moment; when the cause is destroyed and the effect vanishes, suffering has no way to arise. Merely causing them not to enter the three evil paths is termed taking on suffering on behalf of sentient beings. Therefore, the sufferings of birth and death in the three realms are all deludedly undergone by sentient beings. Because they do not comprehend that sense faculties and dusts lack self-nature and that roots and branches are constantly empty, within ultimate non-existence they grasp and form definitive existence. Due to this, through greedy grasping, they bind karma and receive rebirth, undergoing the suffering of saṃsāra over immeasurable kalpas, covered by avidyā, unconscious and unknowing. The bodhisattva thereupon extends a mind of great compassion, pitying this inversion, and expounds the Dharma medicine of the emptiness of nature to smash the root of the affliction of sentimental existence; thus they realize that suffering is unarisen and do not commit evil karma, knowing that sensations arise mutually and are able to destroy the cause of delusion. Since the deludedly received suffering is already empty, the antidote of joy naturally ceases. Therefore, a master of old said: 'Suffering is joy, joy is suffering; / Just this cultivation severs the gateways. / There is neither suffering nor joy; / Originally, the self-nature has no bonds.' Through this wondrous awakening, entering the gate of the single limit, they then attain the emptiness of both person and dharmas, no longer bound by mind and objects; right where they are, they obtain liberation and eternally emerge from the source of suffering. How is this not taking on suffering? Furthermore, a sūtra says: 'Expounding the Dharma is the great spiritual transformation; it can cause the ordinary immediately to become noble, turning misfortune into auspiciousness, leaping from amidst the wheel of fire in the hells onto the lotus throne of a pure kṣetra.' How is this not a spiritual transformation?