法苑珠林 1.3

1.3

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.