法苑珠林 1.3

1.3

自夫六爻爰起八卦成列。肇有書契。昭乎訓典。鳳篆龍圖。金簡玉字。百家異轍。萬卷分區。雖理究精微言殫物範。而紀情括性。未出於寰中。原始要終。詎該於俗外。亦有藏史之說。園吏之談。寶經浮誕。錦籍紆怪。同鏤氷而無成。若書空而匪實。與夫貫華妙旨寫葉玄詞。二乘之宏博。八藏之沈祕。競以淺深。較其優劣。亦猶蟻垤之小。比峻於嵩華。牛涔之微。爭長於江漢。夫其顯了之義。隱密之規。解脫之門。總持之苑。前際後際。並契真如。初心末心。咸歸正覺。導迷生於慾海。情塵共心垢同消。引窮子於慈室。衣寶與髻珠雙至。化溢恒沙之境。功被微塵之劫。大哉至矣。不可得而稱焉。洎偕兩徵周。佩日通漢。蔡愔西涉。竺蘭東遊。金口之詞。寶臺之旨。盈縑積籀。被乎中域。而卷軸繁夥。條流深曠。實相真源。卒難詳覽。暨我皇唐造物聖上君臨。玄教聿宣。緇徒充合。傳輝寫液。照潤區宇。梵響讚音。喝咽都甸。弘宣之盛。指喻難極。屬有西明寺大德道世法師字玄惲。是釋門之領袖也。幼嶷聚砂。落飾綵衣之歲。慈殷接蟻。資成具受之壇。戒品圓明。與吞珠而等護。律義精曉。隨照鏡而同欣。愛慕大乘。洞明實相。爰以英博。召居西明。遂以五部餘閑。三藏遍覽。以為古今綿代。制作多人。雖雅趣佳詞。無足於博記。所以搴文囿之菁華。嗅大義之瞻蔔。以類編錄。號曰法苑珠林。總一百篇。勒成十帙。義豐文約。紐虞氏之博要。跡宣道鏡。晞祐上之弘明。其言以美。其道斯著。舉至賾而無遺。包妙門而必盡。但文繁則情墮。義略則寡聞。不欲虛搆浮詞。假盈卷軸。以事不可却。文翰似多。披覽日久。還知其要。故於大唐總章元年。歲在執徐。律惟沽洗。三月三十日。纂集斯畢。庶使緝玄詞者。探卷而得意珠。軌正道者。披文而飲甘露。繹之以知微。觀之而覩奧。與環景而齊照。將旋穹而共久。

Ever since the six lines arose and the eight trigrams took their ranks, writing and contracts first emerged, and instructional canons were made illustrious. Phoenix scripts and dragon diagrams, golden slips and jade characters—the hundred schools took different paths, and ten thousand scrolls divided their territories. Although their principles investigated the minute and delicate and their words exhausted standards for things, their recording of passions and summarising of nature never transcended the worldly realm; in pursuing beginnings and tracing ends, how could they encompass what lies beyond the mundane? There were also the sayings of the Archive Keeper and the talks of the Garden Official; their treasured scriptures were floating and absurd, and their brocade registers were convoluted and bizarre. Like carving ice without accomplishment, or like writing in the air without substance. How could they compete in depth or compare in quality with the wondrous tenets strung like blossoms, the abstruse phrases inscribed on leaves, the vast breadth of the two vehicles, and the profound secrecy of the eight storehouses? It is indeed like the smallness of an ant mound vying in height with Mounts Song and Hua, or the pettiness of an ox's footprint competing in flow with the Yangzi and Han Rivers! Now, as for its evident meanings and esoteric regulations, its gates of liberation and gardens of dhāraṇī: past and future limits both tally with tathatā; initial mind and ultimate mind alike return to saṃbodhi. Guiding deluded beings in the ocean of desire, emotional defilements and mental taints vanish together; leading the impoverished son into the chamber of compassion, the jewel in the clothes and the gem in the topknot arrive at once. Its transformation overflows realms as numerous as the sands of the Ganges; its merits blanket kalpas as numerous as specks of dust. Vast indeed! Supreme indeed! Impossible to praise fully! Later, when the twin stars presaged the Zhou and the sun held in the bosom reached the Han, Cai Yin journeyed west and Zhu Falan travelled east. The words from golden mouths and the tenets from jewelled terraces filled silken rolls and piled up in scripts, spreading across the Central Region. Yet the scrolls were vast and manifold, and their lineages deep and extensive; the true source of the dharmatā was difficult to inspect thoroughly in the end. Until our August Tang established the state and the Sage Emperor governed above, the abstruse teaching was thereupon proclaimed, and the dark-robed assembly gathered in abundance. Transmitting radiance and copying out the fluid, they illuminated and moistened the realms; Sanskrit chants and praise songs resounded through the capital and suburban domains. The grandeur of its broad proclamation is beyond all metaphors. There was the Great Virtue Master Daoshi of Ximing Temple, courtesy name Xuanyun, a leader of the Śākya school. In his youth, as gifted as piling sand, he cast off secular ornaments at the age of wearing patterned garments; with deep compassion in protecting ants, he completed his qualifications at the ordination altar. His monastic precepts were fully clarified, guarded just as [the monk] protected the swallowed pearl; his mastery of vinaya principles was exquisite, rejoiced in just as one gazes into a mirror. Loving and admiring the Mahāyāna, he penetrated and understood the dharmatā. Because of his outstanding erudition, he was summoned to reside at Ximing Temple. Thereupon, during his leisure from the five divisions [of the vinaya], he read widely through the tripiṭaka. Considering that across ancient and modern times, successive generations had seen many authors, whose elegant tastes and fine words still left something lacking in comprehensive recording, he therefore plucked the flowers of the literary garden and inhaled the campaka of great meanings. Compiling and cataloguing them by category, he named it the Forest of Gems in the Garden of the Dharma, in a total of one hundred sections arranged into ten cases. The meaning is abundant and the phrasing concise, combining the vastness and conciseness of Yu Shirong, displaying the mirror of the path in trace, and aspiring to the grand clarity of Sengyou. Its language is beautiful, its path illustrious; it adduces the most profound without omission, and embraces the wondrous gates completely. Yet when the text is voluminous, one's spirit flags; when the meaning is brief, one's knowledge remains slight. Not wishing to construct groundless floating words merely to fill scrolls, yet because events cannot be cast aside, the writing seems voluminous; but through persistent perusal, one will come to know its essentials. Therefore, in the Great Tang, in the first year of the Zongzhang era, the year being zhixu, the pitch-pipe being guxi, on the thirtieth day of the third month, this compilation was completed. May those who gather abstruse phrases find the jewel of comprehension upon opening the scrolls; may those who walk the correct path drink the sweet dew upon unrolling the text! Unravel it to understand the subtle; contemplate it to behold the profound! Together with the circling sun, it shall shine equally; alongside the revolving vault of heaven, it shall endure forever.