金剛般若經旨贊 2.151

2.151

Sūtra: “Subhūti, […] would he attain much merit?” / Commentary: Complete endowment with merit within the purity of wisdom and seeing resolves the fifteenth doubt, that merit is not good, leading one to cultivate complete endowment with merit in the Buddha's body. Wisdom can guide and produce merit, and merit serves as the support able to nourish wisdom. If there were no merit, what would knowledge and vision rely on? One could not dwell in the earlier pure land, nor could one bring about the two bodies with their later marks. To accomplish the earlier and later, conventional and true merit, bodhisattvas, unable to comprehend that minds are all non-minds free from inversions, conversely suspect that merit is also free from inversions, raising this doubt: "If it is said that defiled and pure minds are all inverted, then cultivating merit on the basis of mind is also free from inversions. Since it is not good, why is it necessary to cultivate it?" Due to grasping, they do not leave the causes of inversion; due to doubt, they do not cultivate the merit that is free from inversions. Now, wishing to reveal their doubting and grasping minds and lead them to cultivate the merit free from inversions, [the sūtra] shows that signless merit is exceedingly great. Asaṅga calls leaving grasping to cultivate merit "complete endowment with merit"; Vasubandhu calls dispelling doubt to know goodness "resolving the doubt that merit is not good." The text below has three parts: question, answer, and confirmation. This is the first. If, with a mind free from inversions and non-abiding, one gives the seven precious substances as an offering to the Tathāgata, one will attain sovereign merit of the Buddha's body. For this reason, would that merit not be much?