翻譯名義集 7.83

7.83

The Tiantai meditation master's method of contemplating the mind while eating: Having arranged one's seat and sat down, one attends to the karmadāna's cues for advancing and halting. After striking the chime, one joins the hands to make offerings to the unified Three Jewels, pervasive throughout the ten directions, performing the Buddha's work. Next, one dispenses the morsel of rice, declaring an offering to the six destinies, which symbolizes the six pāramitās; only thereafter does one partake of this food. Food is indeed the external life of sentient beings. If one does not enter into contemplation, it moistens [the cycle of] birth and death; if one can know how to enter into contemplation, one discerns whether birth and death have boundaries or are boundless. Regardless of whether it is alms-food or pure food from the assembled community, all must be contemplated with this reflection: One fears that the old food previously within this body is entirely ignorance and afflictions, moistening and increasing birth and death. The food one eats now is entirely prajñā. One visualizes the old food exiting successively from one's pores. Once the food has exited, the path of the mind opens. Eating the present new food illuminates and extinguishes all darkness, culminating in prajñā. Therefore the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa says: "One who is equal with respect to food is also equal with respect to dharmas." This is clear proof. (The Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra states: "All dharmas tend toward taste; this tendency cannot be surpassed. Since even taste cannot be apprehended, how could there be tendency or non-tendency?" What is meant by 'all dharmas tend toward taste' is that taste is food itself. This food is the inconceivable dharmadhātu. Food contains and encompasses all dharmas. If food exists, all dharmas exist. If food does not exist, all dharmas do not exist. Now, because food is inconceivable, it is not yet seen to exist, so how could there be a tendency? It is not yet seen not to exist, so how could there be a non-tendency? If one contemplates food without seeing tendency or non-tendency, this is the samādhi of the Middle Way, called the food of true Dharma-delight and meditative joy; and being able to penetrate the dharmas of tendency and non-tendency means doubly illuminating the two truths and attaining the food of the Dharma-delight and meditative joy of the samādhi of the two truths; this is called equality of food.) By means of this food, it becomes the food of prajñā, capable of nourishing the dharmakāya. Once the dharmakāya is established, one attains liberation. These are the three virtues. One who contemplates this food sees it as neither new nor old; yet there is the past of old food and the present of new food: this is called the provisional. Seeking the old, it cannot be apprehended; seeking the new, it cannot be apprehended; being ultimately empty and quiescent: this is called emptiness. As for one who contemplates food, from where could the food eaten be considered new? Since there is no new food, how could there be an eater? Yet not departing from the old food nourishing the body while the new food adds replenishment, through the harmonious combination of causes and conditions, it cannot be distinguished as before or after: this is called the middle. The middle is itself the provisional and the empty; the empty is itself the middle and the provisional; the provisional is itself the empty and the middle. Being inconceivable, it is called the Middle Way. Furthermore, the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa states: "Neither possessing afflictions nor free from afflictions, neither entering the state of concentration nor emerging from the state of concentration—this is called the method of eating." (Kumārajīva says: "First is food taken in morsels (kavaḍīkārāhāra); second is food of intention, like seeing a bag of sand so that life is not extinguished; third is food of karma, like living in hell without food; fourth is food of consciousness (vijñānāhāra), where sentient beings in the formless realm have consciousness and perception continuing in succession.")