釋氏要覽 1.198

1.198

The Sūtra of Three Thousand Dignified Manners states: "The practice of leaving the household has beginner and advanced, superior, middling, and inferior karma. The inferior take the ten precepts as fundamental, upholding them to the end of their bodily lives; although they have renounced household ties, their practical labor is equal to that of secular people. The middling should renounce practical duties, fully receiving the eighty-four thousand causes and conditions directed toward the Path; their bodily, verbal, and mental karmas are not yet fully purified, and inner knots still remain, so that they have not yet achieved liberation—compared to the superior they are deficient, but compared to the inferior they have surplus. The superior have sharp and forceful roots of mind, abandoning the fetters of the defilements; through the power of concentration and wisdom their minds attain liberation, purifying body, speech, and mind, leaving behind the house of conditional duties and afflictions, and abiding forever in the chamber of quiet and cool serenity. These are called superior disciples who have left the household."