緇門警訓 4.62

4.62

An ordinary being's understanding of meaning always relies on listening and studying. Acting as one who understands the Dharma, their body transgresses the four parājikas and keeps the eight impure things; they take money and food, devour worldly meals, and are shameless and brazen; knowing the precepts, they deliberately transgress them, without fear of future lifetimes. Therefore, I instruct you to weigh and examine the mind's actions, first purifying the prohibitive precepts and only afterward listening to sūtras. By using these five admonitions, you may obtain the name of a purified mind. In ancient times, when great virtues lectured on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, there was only a one-scroll commentary. Later, a Dharma master produced a three-scroll commentary. Nowadays, lecturers take just the single chapter on the Ten Grounds and produce a ten-scroll commentary, each showing off their ability and vying to display elaborate recitation. The words and writings are vastly expansive, leaving the mind nowhere to rest. Yet words are in their very substance the meaning itself; why need human speech? Nowadays, foolish people vie in seeking fame, not seeking the Dharma. Even the Dharma must not be clung to, how much less words and letters? Because the Dharma transcends words and speech is cut off, the Mahāsaṃnipāta Sūtra says: 'The text of the sūtra is one, yet the lecturers give differing explanations; each relying on their own views, they corrupt and disorder the Saddharma. Because the heavenly spirits are angered, the three disasters arise together. Due to these causes and conditions, the Buddhadharma becomes diluted and thin, like a picul of water dissolving a single sheng of curd: looking at it, it seems to have the color of curd, but eating it, it has no flavor.' When carefully considering lecturing and disputation, human sentiment measures the Buddha; how could the sphere of the Buddha's wisdom be something a human can measure? Examining in this manner is called the purified mind.