From "Introduction
to the Commentary on the Root Karmas Sutra"
An Exegesis
by Wonhyo
"The original Master's Two Truths and Middle Path are consequently a
ford of an impossible path. The weighty
and profound Dharma Gate passes beyond the principle of an
impossible gate. Because it's an impossible path,
one can't use having mind to walk it. Because it's an impossible gate, one can't use having
walking to enter it. So by this usage, the great ocean has no ford, yet with a floating
boat and oars one is able to ferry across. The
empty sky has no ladder, yet with fluttering feathered wings one soars high. So
it is known, with the Path of the pathless, as such there is nothing that is
not the Path; with the Gate of the gateless, then
there is nothing that isn't a gate. Because
there are none that are not a gate, every matter in all cases
becomes an entry to the gate of the profound.
Because there are none that aren't the path, every place entirely is a road of return to the source. The road of return to the source is quite level, yet there is no person to walk it. Entry to the gate of the profound is leisurely just so, yet there is no person able to enter
it."
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Note: The phrase "the original Master" refers to the Buddha.
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The Korean Dharma Master Wonhyo (元曉法師, 617–686) is among the most well known and venerated
Buddhist Masters in the history of Korea. Like any good legendary hero figure,
Wonhyo's life included wonders and portents such as a falling star entering his
mother's womb at her pregnancy and a five-colored cloud covering the earth at
his birth. After his awakening, the
stories of his behavior were very much like those told of the Chinese Zen Masters.
For example, one day while lecturing in Korea, Wonhyo suddenly interrupted his talk, fetched a bottle of
water, and spat the water to the west, saying that there was a fire in
Shengshansi in China. On one occasion he was singing in the street: “Who will lend me a handle-less axe,
so that I can cut away the heaven-supporting pillar?”
Wonhyo is most famous for his enlightenment story
of stopping in a cave shrine on a rainy night on his way to China to seek out a
true master of the teachings, and while sheltering, he drank delicious rainwater
from a bowl and had a restful sleep. Then the following morning he discovered
that the cave was a tomb and the bowl was a maggot riddled skull cap. He was so
disturbed by his revulsion on learning what he had been drinking, yet knowing
that when he was drinking it, the water was deliciously thirst quenching, that he
could not sleep the following night as he and his traveling companion Uisang, (625–702) were visited by ghosts from the tomb. With
the contrast of the two nights contending in his mind, a line from the Treatise
on the Great Vehicle's Arousing of Faith came to memory ("By being born in the mind every
kind of thing is born" 以心生則種種法生 T32n1666_p0577b22), and he had
an awakening expericnce grounded in his own realization and proclaimed "the
three realms are only mind" (cittamatra)(三界唯心)
and "outside of mind there are no things" (dharmas) (心外無法).
Wonhyo specialized in the
One Vehicle texts and teachings. Wonhyo's
commentarites include those on the Root Karmas Sutra, Queen Srimala's
Lion's Roar Sutra, The Lankavatara Sutra, The Flower Garland
Sutra, The White Lotus Sutra, The
Sutra of the Diamond Samadhi, The Sutra of Union With Deliverance, The Brahma's
Net Sutra, and The Mahaparinirvana Sutra. and on the One Vehicle related treatises
the Ratnagotravibhaga and Treatise on the Mahayana Arousing of Faith. Wonhyo was famous for his emphasis on the harmonization of
doctrinal disputes (和諍 K. hwajaeng), which is the signature move of the One Vehicle approach to the
Buddha's teachings, and he received the posthumous title "National Master
of the Harmonization of Disputes." (和諍國師)
In my studies for my
translation of Queen Srimala's Lion's Roar Sutra I learned that Wonhyo's commentary to that sutra is no longer extant,
but that he had the emphasis on the One Vehicle texts as listed above. Wonhyo
has the only extant early commentary focusing on the One Vehicle sutra with the
full title Sutra of the Root Karmas of the
Bodhisattva’s Gem Necklace (菩薩瓔珞本業經, T24n1485) which
has a direct relation to Queen Srimala's Sutra in regards to the
description of the four basic Abiding State Afflictions and the underlying
beginningless Abiding State of Ignorance. In his "Introduction
to the Commentary on the Root Karmas Sutra" Wonhyo says the teachings of this sutra
are extremely subtle and, with a characteristically One Vehicle description, called
them the "Path of the pathless" and the "Gate of the gateless."
It is the first paragraph of his Introduction that is translated above. Wonhyo
viewed the meaning of "root karmas" to be the karmas from the combinations of
virtuous merits and wisdom used as the two oars to cross the ocean of the
Buddha Dharma, and the meditation practices of calming (samatha) and contemplation (vipassyana) used as the two wings allowing
one to fly high in the vast space of the Dharma-nature.
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