佛祖統紀 1.73

1.73

The Shiqian says: Regarding the sixth, the past and present: the past is the trace, pointing to the trace gate and all trace teachings; the present is the origin, pointing to the origin gate. Everything before the origin gate is termed the past; only after the emergence [from the earth] is it termed the present. Therefore it says that having already spoken of phenomena and principle, up to the expedient and the real, is termed trace; speaking at present of phenomena and principle, up to the expedient and the real, is all termed origin. Thus we know that without the phenomena and principle, up to the expedient and the real within the traces, how could the remote origin be revealed? Moreover, although the words 'past and present' differ from the previous five, they also provisionally point to the 'Life Span [Chapter]' as the present origin. If viewed with respect to the initial origin, then one should further distinguish the past and present as different: prior to the Lotus Sūtra, the past and present of all sūtras still belonged to the traces. What the present sūtra clarifies directly explains the remote origin; that is, the past and present already spoken are traces, and the past and present spoken at present are the origin—only this is the real teaching. Why is it that among the citations of evidence for the six gates, the first three cite traces, and the latter three cite the origin? The first three are general to both origin and traces, both having phenomena and principle down to teaching and practice. The three such as essence and function are specific within the general. Since it says 'origin-function' and 'origin-expedient', these cannot be revealed by trace texts; how much more so, taking the origin gate as the present, clearly trace texts cannot be cited. For this reason, three cite trace texts and three cite origin texts. Furthermore, since the first three texts pertain to causes, and the original causes are narrow, they merely use traces to illustrate the origin; therefore they only cite the trace gate.