法苑珠林 93.37

93.37

The commentary states: This single teaching also contains the provisional and the real. As for the 'provisional teaching', according to the Vinaya, when the World-Honoured One first attained awakening, in order to ferry across crude and coarse ordinary people, they were not yet capable of receiving subtle [teachings]. For the time being, within the gradual teaching, he spoke of three kinds of pure meat—free from seeing, hearing, or suspecting [that it was killed for oneself]—as well as meat leftover by birds or of natural death, permitting it to be eaten. Leading them first from the crude to the subtle, he gradually caused them to abandon error. This was with an intention for a particular period, an inexplicit statement. If based on the real teaching, from the time he first attained the Way up to the night of nirvāṇa, the Great Sage earnestly never permitted it from beginning to end.