法苑珠林 33.20

33.20

Furthermore, the *Sarvāstivāda-śāstra* says: A dānapati gave three hundred thousand coins to the monk Channa to build a large cell. The cell was completed on the very day it collapsed. The expense and labor having been vast, the dānapati's mind fell back in regret. The monks preached the Dharma for the dānapati: Although the cell collapsed, the merit was accomplished. Before the cell was ruined, the Buddha had already arrived inside this cell, which constitutes its use. The Buddha is an unsurpassed field of merit (puṇyakṣetra); since the Buddha already made use of it, the merit is profound, vast, and immeasurable. Moreover, when the cell was first completed, a newly ordained young monk whose precept-virtue was pure had entered this cell and finished [his use of it]. The virtue of the dānapati's faithful gift: even if one were to erect hundreds of millions of diverse, ornate chambers and pavilions, reaching down to the Vajra-ground and rising high and wide like Mount Sumeru—if a single monk of pure precepts makes use of it for even a moment and finishes, the beneficence of the gift, being based on precepts, is not of the worldly realm but is the gateway to nirvāṇa. It is not like dwellings, bedding, food, and medicine, which are worldly phenomena, not the rare phenomena that transcend the world.