法苑珠林 79.5

79.5

When first entering the Buddha-Dharma, one must make faith the foremost priority. It is like a person arriving at a jewel mountain: if he has no hand of faith, he returns empty-handed with nothing gained. Therefore the sūtras say that foolish people do not understand cause and effect, falsely give rise to wrong views, slanderously deny the existence of the Three Jewels and the Four Noble Truths, claim there is neither misfortune nor fortune, nor even good or evil, nor karmic retribution for good and evil, nor sentient beings undergoing rebirth in the present or future lifetimes. People such as this destroy wholesome and unwholesome phenomena; this is called severing the roots of wholesomeness. They are bound to fall into the Avīci Hell.