佛祖統紀 3.57

3.57

The Lord of Teaching of the Avataṃsaka. The commentary states: In discussing the Lord of Teaching of the Avataṃsaka, according to the explanation in Siming's Jiebāng, regarding the Venerable and Special Body, there is a distinction between whether it must be manifested or need not be manifested. When it must be manifested, as in the Brahmājāla, Avataṃsaka, and the Guan jing, its marks are numerous and its body is vast. When it need not be manifested, through spiritual power, he causes them not to grasp delimitation regarding his inferior body, seeing the thirty-two marks as having no boundaries, thereby knowing that the sixteen-foot body is the Dharma realm. Now, carefully examining this explanation and testing it against the sūtra texts, there are two meanings. The first is in terms of being one birth away from Buddhahood: achieving sambodhi for the first time beneath the bodhi tree. If he were not one birth away from Buddhahood, how could it be called 'first achieved'? Furthermore, a gāthā says: 'Kāśyapa once came to dwell in this palace, / Therefore this place is the most auspicious.' In this way, ten gāthās praise the past ten Buddhas. Since each Buddha is one birth away from Buddhahood, one knows that the Buddha possessing marks and characteristics numerous as particles of dust in the treasury must be a body of delimited birth and death, no different at all from the response body of the Shared Dwelling [realm]. The second is in terms of ascending: that is, at that time the World-Honoured One, without leaving the foot of the bodhi tree, ascended Mount Sumeru (the Avataṃsaka Gumu says: 'Ascending without moving, responding to capacities and finding the place') and went toward Śakra's palace to preach the Dharma (namely, the aforementioned palace where the ten Buddhas including Kāśyapa once dwelt; ascending precisely means manifesting). How could the Avataṃsaka not be preached by hundreds of thousands of myriads of response bodies? Since this body addresses the capacities of the distinct and round [teachings] and is seen as the Venerable and Special, why must one point exclusively to the body receiving the office upon the lotus pedestal? This refutes Jingjue's claim that the Venerable and Special of the particles of dust in the treasury of the True Reward Land horizontally responds to the Shared Dwelling realm. For the Great Master stated that the three grades of oceans of marks are all manifested in accordance with capacities. In the distinct teaching, one uses separate cultivation of the conditional and complete [causes] to achieve these marks; this is the Venerable and Special produced by cultivation, and is thus called the reward-body. In the round teaching, one can understand that the two kinds of cultivation are identical to the nature, and cultivation's virtue is without effort; this is the Venerable and Special inherent in the nature, and is thus called the Dharma-body. Relying on this, one knows: speaking in terms of nature, it is originally called the Dharma-body; taking the land of Shared Dwelling, it is called the response-body; manifesting in response to capacity, it is called the Venerable and Special. This is forever different from Jingjue's theory of the cultivated Venerable and Special horizontally responding to the Shared Dwelling realm. Thus, when the present master determines the body in terms of capacity and teaching, it is precisely the physical body beneath the tree manifesting the Venerable and Special to respond to the capacities of the distinct and round [teachings]. This perfectly tallies with the Miaoxuan's 'Śākyamuni initially preaching the sudden' (Śākyamuni is the physical body; preaching the sudden is Vairocana). It also tallies with the Si jiaoyi's statement: 'The Tathāgata manifests the body of Rocana to preach the Dharma' (the Tathāgata is Śākyamuni's physical body, manifesting the Venerable and Special, and thus transformed in name to Rocana). In the world, some adopt the explanation of Yuetang, who says: 'The fundamental body of the object is Śākyamuni; the marks perceived through the stimulus of capacities are Rocana.' This indeed captures the point.