華嚴經傳記 1.4

1.4

Upon examination, this sūtra is the dharmadhātu body-cloud of Vairocana Buddha, preached for the great bodhisattvas within the sāgaramudrā-samādhi in the Padmagarbha-alaṃkāra-lokadhātusamudra together with the holy assembly vast as the ocean, including Samantabhadra and others. Every single word and every single meaning, every single chapter and every single assembly, pervades the empty space of the dharmadhātu of the ten directions, each and every dust mote, the tip of every hair, and every land, exhausting the minute worlds of Indra's net and reaching the oceans of all kalpas through past and future, each thought-moment possessing boundless kalpas, constantly preached and universally preached without cessation. It is sustained solely by the power of inexhaustible dhāraṇī, not something that can be recorded with brush and ink. This is the wheel of the complete Dharma, a discourse matching the dharmadhātu. Yet, because the root is never separate from the traces, the location is placed among humans and devas, and the time is set during the second seven [days]. Because the traces are never separate from the root, the nine assemblies pervade the ten directions, and the second seven encompasses the ten time-periods. Because the root and traces are non-dual, the boundless is made bounded, and the bounded is boundless. As in this sūtra, the Samantamukha-sūtra held by the monk Sāgaramegha, with brushes heaped like Mount Sumeru and ink like the great ocean's waters, could not be exhausted in copying each chapter. Furthermore, as the Tripiṭaka Master Paramārtha said, records of the Western Regions state that Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna went to the Dragon Palace and saw three versions of this Avataṃsaka Great Acintya-vimokṣa Sūtra: the upper version contains verses in number like the dust motes of thirteen thousand great-thousand worlds and chapters in number like the dust motes of the four continents; the middle version contains 498,800 verses and 1,200 chapters; and the lower version contains 100,000 verses and 48 chapters. The upper and middle versions, as well as the Samantamukha-sūtra and others, cannot be sustained by ordinary mortal power and remain concealed and untransmitted. The lower version is seen circulating in India. This is because capacities and awakenings differ, so what is heard must vary accordingly. Therefore, Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra directly received the complete teaching; Vasubandhu and Nāgārjuna only glimpsed the leftover fish-traps. The lesser sages sat in the same assembly yet did not hear it; the great beings were in different realms yet awoke to it first. The concealment or manifestation of the holy teachings and the superiority or inferiority of capacities can certainly be known from this. Furthermore, because the Buddha's departure from the world is now distant and the retributive capacity of sentient beings is inferior, their physical strength, mindfulness, and wisdom have all diminished; with regard to this lower version, they lack the capacity to receive it in its entirety. Consequently, according to their capacity and interest, they copied and upheld it in parts. In some cases, the full 100,000 verses of the large version still remain; in some cases, it was 36,000 verses, as translated in the Jin dynasty; or over 40,000 verses, as translated in this Zhou dynasty; or its chapters and assemblies were divided into separate fascicles, as distinguished under the branch currents; or it gradually fell into oblivion and its title was no longer heard—all this is brought about by the capacity of vessels. It is also like the bright sun shining in the sky: the brightness has neither superiority nor inferiority, but clear eyes behold it completely, dazzled eyes see it faintly, and the blind see nothing at all. How could the sun not be brilliant? Here it is just the same: extensive or abridged depends on the vessel, while the root Dharma suffers no loss.