佛祖統紀 49.12

49.12

The treatise says: Those who cultivate the teachings of the Śākya clan strive for three things and no more: discipline, absorption, and wisdom. This Path begins with generating the mind [of awakening] and culminates in marvelous awakening. It interweaves the Three Vehicles and leads to perfection in the myriad practices, whereby the capable functions are fully realized. Formerly, when the Dharma King appeared in the world, proceeding from the purity of the One Path, he expounded through a single voice. Because inclinations and receptivities differed, what was heard was distinct. Thus the doctrines of the five periods, the five flavors, the half and the full, the provisional and the real, the biased and the round, the small and the great, were dispersed among the various schools in splendidly disparate streams. If we summarize that to which they return, none exceeds the One Reality. Therefore a sutra says: 'Although various paths are taught, they are actually for the Buddha Vehicle.' It also says: 'Opening the gates of expedient means, he reveals the characteristic of reality.' Metaphorically, they are like the myriad streams flowing into the sea; marked as the non-dual Dharma gate, self and other both obtain and together reach the secret. This is that by which the teachings were composed. But when the Crane Forest passed into extinction, the Dharma net disintegrated; the spiritual feet concealed themselves, and the ancestral paths diverged. Each clung to what they based themselves upon, and contradictions arose anew. Among them, some manifested birth through samādhi, while the Four Refuges appeared in response to capacities unequally; their maintained arguments were also disparate. Thus the schools of the *Mahāyānasaṃgraha*, the *Bodhisattvabhūmi*, the *Tattvasiddhi*, and Vijñaptimātra arose in parallel, dividing their paths; the discourses on neither-existence nor non-existence could not be unified. Thereupon, as the Holy One receded ever further into the past, such trends fanned out even more. Those who preached the Dharma were fettered by the written words (桎 [zhì] means shackles on feet; 梏 [gù] means shackles on hands) and did not know how to liberate themselves. Those who practiced Chan made their nature and characteristics empty and void, unable to be reined in and returned. Those who approved of this condemned that; those who had not attained claimed realization. The course of intellectual understanding drifted away and forgot to return; deeds of body and speech grew dissolute and devoid of rule. Thereupon, the grand lineage of the Dharma gates almost ceased to be. Yet the teaching could not remain forever obstructed; great persons appeared advantageously. Huiwen and Huisi succeeded one another like leaping dragons. The rumbling of the Dharma thunder was not yet universal, so the wooden clapper was once again bestowed upon the Great Master of Tiantai. The Great Master possessed the transcendent awakening of Śāriputra and Subhūti, and was endowed with the auspicious signs of Emperor Yao and the Great Shun. He extolled the transmitted treatises of Nāgārjuna and followed the marvelous understanding of Nanyue. Afterward, using the three kinds of cessation and contemplation, he accomplished the causal conditions for the One Matter. He embraced the myriad things in the one mind, and unfolded the Ten Vehicles within the Eight Teachings. The expositions of discipline, absorption, and wisdom, and the contemplations of the empty, provisional, and middle, were bright and clear, capable of being taken up and practiced. Thereupon, in the teachings there was no abandoned Dharma; in the Dharma there was no forsaken person; in the person there was no neglected mind; in the mind there was no selective practice. The practice possessed that which was realized; realization possessed its source. This is why the Great Master's school of teachings was so flourishing! Thus, when he was in the world, he shone brightly across the realm as an exemplar for emperors and kings. When he departed from the world, he went back and forth to the upper realms as an assistant to Maitreya. Unfolding and folding within the manifestations of the Universal Gate, bestowing virtue as an envoy of the Tathāgata, his stages, objects, and wisdom truly transcend all praise of virtue. Ah! Although the trace of his response has passed, the subtle words have not fallen. Those who study them are still sufficient to refute the hundred schools and clearly reveal the Tripiṭaka. How much more so for those who, having heard, are able to reflect; having reflected, are able to cultivate; having cultivated, are able to advance; and having advanced, do not cease! Although such a person may be called not yet realized, I would certainly say that he is near. Today, those of correct faith are rare. Those who open the barriers of Chan sometimes transform people through the transformation of 'no Buddha, no Buddha-Dharma, what sin, what merit?' Those from mediocre persons on down—those who gallop after love and desire, and the class of those who move in caps and gowns—take these words to be supreme. Moreover, they do not offend the ear, and private desires are not abandoned. Therefore, those who follow their gate are like flying moths rushing toward a bright candle, or broken clods falling into an empty ravine: utterly unaware that they bring about their own scorching and burning and cannot escape. Though wishing to benefit them, it actually harms them, of a piece with the injury caused by the hosts of Māra and non-Buddhists. Viewed from this perspective, the grand instructions of this school and the wide succor of this teaching cannot be equaled in all the world! From Zhiyi's transmission of the Dharma down through five generations to the present Great Master Zhanran, who revived its Way, it was spoken to me like this. Therefore I recorded it to append to this volume (also titled 'Discourse on the Tiantai Dharma Gates').