眾經撰雜譬喻 1.31

1.31

South of Mount Sumeru there is a great tree, four thousand li high, on which various pakṣa birds roost. The tree is always motionless. But when a small bird resembling a quail came to rest on it, the tree shook and trembled. The pakṣa bird said to the tree spirit: "Without your knowing, my body is heavy, yet you never moved; but when a small bird comes to roost, you shake and tremble instead." The tree spirit said: "Though this bird is small, it came from the bottom of the great ocean and feeds solely on vajra. Where vajra falls, there is nothing it does not destroy; therefore I am terrified and cannot remain at ease." The sūtras take this as a parable: if an ordinary person understands a single phrase of a profound sūtra, chanting it with his mouth and contemplating it in his mind, the three poisons, four māras, and eighty thousand defilement-gates within his body will all be unable to remain at ease—how much more so for one who broadly gathers the manifold dharmas and serves as a bridge for the world!