The Repentance of Non-Arising

I. Did the Self That Erred Ever Truly Exist?

In the last stretch of this volume, repentance grew into two opposing postures. The Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance threw repentance wide open to the outside, growing it into a great rite able to take in the dead and to bend toward universal deliverance; the Lotus Samādhi Repentance Rite drew repentance inward, gathering it toward the real mark and seating it. The two poles look like contraries, yet they come home to a single place — the losing of the self. This paper takes up the inward pole, the one that presses toward the real mark, and pushes it to the floor. When that pole is driven all the way down, what is seen is a fact more thoroughgoing than any disclosure: there is no one who repents, and there is no transgression to be repented.

Return to the beginning. This volume opened with the most concrete, most palpable scene in the whole Vinaya: a monk standing before a witness, laying bare his offense word by word, hiding nothing. From that moment a question already lay coiled beneath the very grammar of disclosure — "I, so-and-so, committed such-and-such an offense": who is the I who says this? what is the offense that is said? What the first six parts answered, all along, was the phenomenal (事, shì) face of repentance — how disclosure cleanses, how concealment compounds into grave fault, how a rite grows a single act into a whole assembly. Those answers were all true, all necessary. But they treated "the I that erred" and "the offense I committed" as two given poles, attending only to the traffic of purity and defilement that runs between them; they never turned the blade the other way, against the poles themselves.

This paper answers that question head-on. The answer is this: at repentance's deepest point, what happens is not the erasing of a really-existent transgression, but the seeing that "the self that erred" and "the transgression I committed" cannot, from the first, be apprehended — this is the repentance of non-arising, the emptiness of the Heart Sūtra appearing face-to-face in the gate of repentance, and the single subtractive term in the six gates' five-plus-one-minus.

This is also the hour at which the volume cashes out what it has held in reserve all along. From the first part onward, every phrase that touched on "transgression has no own-being," on "real-mark repentance," on "sit upright and contemplate the real mark," was held back to this point, leaving in the earlier text only a signpost and no content. Now the signposts are redeemed. One matter of method must be stated first: this paper lays out the shape; it does not exhaust. What it sets out to raise up is the whole contour of "the repentance of non-arising" as a single landscape. As for the full narrative of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa's disciples chapter, the faculty-by-faculty unfolding of the six-faculty repentance in the Samantabhadra-contemplation Sūtra, the line-by-line concordance of the Heart Sūtra with the gate of repentance — these are all reserved for later papers to mine. This paper first traces the shape of the mountain; it does not chisel its stones one by one.

II. The Summit of the Three Repentances: Contemplating Non-Arising, Which Supports Wisdom

To climb to this summit, one must first recognize where it stands on the ladder Tiantai erected. In his Shi chan boluomi cidi famen (Explanation of the Sequential Approach to the Dhyāna-pāramitā), Zhiyi classified repentance into three kinds, each supporting one of the precepts, concentration, or wisdom:

Repentance by contemplating non-arising — this supports wisdom, and thereby clarifies repentance.¹

Repentance by procedure supports the precepts; sign-based (taking-marks) repentance supports concentration; repentance by contemplating non-arising supports wisdom. When this volume first set out the ladder, it laid the rungs only as far as sign-based repentance (supporting concentration), and marked "the repentance of non-arising" as the summit — naming it, but leaving its substance in reserve, zero content, name alone. To stand at this summit now is to redeem that promise, not to begin afresh.

The rank Zhiyi gives this summit is the highest among all repentances:

Know, then, that the deep contemplation of non-arising is named the great repentance, the most honored and most sublime among all repentances. In every Mahāyāna sūtra that clarifies the method of repentance, all take this contemplation as their master. Apart from this contemplation, none can be named the great Vaipulya repentance.²

"Most honored and most sublime," "all take this contemplation as their master" — this is a ranking made in the mode of doctrinal classification: Zhiyi gathers the whole of Mahāyāna repentance under this one contemplative gate, "contemplating non-arising," treating it as the pivot by which Mahāyāna repentance is Mahāyāna repentance at all. One must be candid in marking this: this ranking as "most honored and most sublime" is Tiantai's retrospective integration of the repentance methods, Zhiyi's doctrinal-classification stance, and not the plain self-statement of any single sūtra. Wherever this paper uses the unified name "the repentance of non-arising," it should be remembered that the name is the fruit of a Tiantai synthesis.

A word of guarding must be added. That the three repentances form a "ladder" means that each lends support to what stands above it, layer upon layer — not that the higher rung replaces the lower. The character fú 扶 means, at root, to support, to uphold, to lend strength. To climb to the summit of the repentance of non-arising does not abolish repentance by procedure or sign-based repentance; still less does it turn back and fold the phenomenal repentance of the first six parts wholesale into emptiness, regarding it as a superseded lower rung. Phenomenal repentance (事懺, shìchàn) and principial repentance (理懺, lǐchàn) each have their own face; phenomenal repentance has its own real, cleansing power. The summiting of principial repentance lends support to it — it does not depose it.

(In passing: Zhiyi also says here that the wisdom of the patience of non-arising is aroused within meditative absorption — that supporting-wisdom rests upon supporting-concentration. This seam between repentance and concentration is left for the gate of concentration to treat in detail; here it is only a signpost.)

III. The Verse of Real-Mark Repentance: Sit Upright and Contemplate the Real Mark

The mechanism of the repentance of non-arising finds its most condensed statement in the Real-Mark Repentance verse of the Sūtra on the Contemplation of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra:

The whole sea of karmic obstruction is born from deluded thought. If you would repent, sit upright and contemplate the real mark. The host of transgressions are like frost and dew; the sun of wisdom can dissolve them. Therefore, with a wholehearted mind, repent the six faculties of feeling.³

The verse presses the entire mechanism into eight lines. The whole of karmic obstruction has its source in deluded thought; and since the source is deluded thought, the remedy is not to seek outward for some absolver to wipe the obstruction away, but to "sit upright and contemplate the real mark" — to see the real mark. Once the real mark appears, the host of transgressions are like the frost of morning and the dew of evening: once the sun of wisdom rises, they melt of themselves. Frost and dew vanish not because someone wipes them off, but because, where the sunlight reaches, they have no body in which to abide. This is the full weight of the phrase "the sun of wisdom": the dissolution of transgression is a seeing, not an absolution; a turn of cognition, not an easing of feeling.

The "mark-free repentance" passage of the same sūtra says this "seeing" still more transparently:

Contemplate the mind as no-mind: it arises from inverted thought… Such dharma-marks neither arise nor cease. What is transgression? What is merit? My own mind is empty; transgression and merit have no owner… Repentance such as this — contemplating the mind as no-mind, dharma not abiding in dharma, all dharmas released, the truth of cessation at peace — is named the repentance free of the mark of transgression.⁴

"My own mind is empty; transgression and merit have no owner" — when one turns to contemplate the very mind that committed the transgression, one finds that it arose from inverted thought, and that there is no substantial mind to be apprehended; and since the mind is itself empty, the transgression and the merit that were posited upon the mind have, likewise, no owner to which they could be fastened. The marks of dharmas, at root, "neither arise nor cease," and so this is named "the repentance free of the mark of transgression." Note: when the passage asks "what is transgression? what is merit?" it is not denying the distinction of good and evil, not sweeping causation away. It is the apophatic negation of the own-being of transgression and merit — transgression has no independent, self-standing substance that waits to be absolved.

(A collation must be appended: when Zhiyi quotes this verse in the Shi chan boluomi, his wording differs slightly — "born from deluded thought" becomes "born by deluded thought," and "with a wholehearted mind" becomes "with a sincere mind." The Samantabhadra-contemplation Sūtra's own text reads the former. When quoting the sūtra one should use the sūtra's own words; when reporting Zhiyi's citation one should mark it as a citation, and the two must not be laid one over the other.⁵)

IV. Transgression Has No Own-Being: "Neither Within, Nor Without, Nor in Between"

The Real-Mark Repentance verse says that transgression is "born from deluded thought"; the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa pushes this "having no own-being" to its limit. The scene need only be touched in passing (the full narrative is reserved for a later paper): Upāli, foremost in upholding the Vinaya, is sent to console two monks who, having broken a precept, are sunk in distress; Vimalakīrti intervenes on the spot, turning the question from "how to clear the offense according to the rule" into "where, exactly, is the offense?" His words:

The nature of that transgression is neither within, nor without, nor in between. As the Buddha has said: because the mind is defiled, beings are defiled; because the mind is pure, beings are pure… As the mind is, so is the defilement of transgression, so are all dharmas — none departing from suchness.⁶

Neither within, nor without, nor in between — this is a Nāgārjunian apophasis: to search everywhere for where the transgression lies and to find it nowhere is precisely to show that transgression has no own-being. The defilement of transgression follows the mind; as the mind is suchness, so is the transgression; "so are all dharmas — none departing from suchness" — transgression shares one and the same real mark with all dharmas, and no single dharma can stand outside suchness as a "really-existent transgression" of its own.

Here three lines converge upon "transgression has no own-being": Vimalakīrti's "neither within, without, nor in between," the Samantabhadra-contemplation Sūtra's "my own mind is empty; transgression and merit have no owner," and Zhiyi's —

Neither apprehending transgression nor non-transgression; contemplating that transgression is non-arising shatters all transgression — for all transgressions are rooted in emptiness, and are ever pure.⁷

"Neither apprehending transgression nor non-transgression"; "all transgressions are rooted in emptiness." The three passages point to one meaning. Yet candor is still owed: these three come from three distinct textual traditions, whose contexts and aims were never the same — the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa is a Prajñā-school rebuke pitched to the occasion, the Samantabhadra-contemplation Sūtra is a liturgy of contemplative repentance, the Shi chan boluomi is Tiantai doctrinal classification. What gathers them into the single category "the repentance of non-arising" is the integrative labor of Tiantai, not three sūtras that were ever one set.

Here, too, a thread running through the whole volume closes — the through-line of a single figure. Upāli: from the volume's opening as the compiler of the Vinaya (the foundation of phenomenal repentance laid by his hand), to this scene where he is rebuked by Vimalakīrti (where principial repentance reaches its summit) — one and the same person, walking from the base of phenomenal repentance to the summit of principial repentance, head and tail joined. And the very scene of his rebuke pre-blocks the most dangerous misreading of the next chapter. Vimalakīrti's phrase "neither apprehending transgression nor non-transgression" is the apophatic negation of the Middle Way; it is not the annihilationist view that sweeps karmic fruit away. This point is held below, and argued in detail in the next chapter.

V. Five Plus One Minus: Repentance Is the Emptiness of the Heart Sūtra

Now the architectural payoff the volume has kept in reserve can be uncovered. The Heart Sūtra has a single line, the literal landing-place of "non-arising":

All dharmas are marked with emptiness: neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing.⁸

"Neither arising nor ceasing" is "non-arising." The "non-arising" of the repentance of non-arising is not some separate hidden meaning; it is exactly this line of the Heart Sūtra appearing within the gate of repentance.

Set this line into the whole architecture of the six gates, and its design shows itself. The six gates — mindfulness, giving, precepts, concentration, vow, repentance — each answer to one item of the Heart Sūtra: mindfulness to "contemplate," giving to "cross over (all suffering and distress)," precepts to "neither (increasing nor decreasing, and the other negations)," concentration to "ultimate (nirvāṇa)," vow to "attain (anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi)." These five gates each carry a verb, and each is additive: to contemplate, to cross over, to negate-and-uphold, to bring to the ultimate, to realize — every one of them is to do a thing. Repentance alone answers to no verb, but to "emptiness" — form is emptiness, all dharmas marked with emptiness. The reason repentance has no verb of its own in the Heart Sūtra is not that it is a gap; it is precisely that it is emptiness: emptiness is not an act, and so no verb can be matched to it.

Thus the six gates are "five plus one minus": the five gates build additively, and the one gate of repentance empties subtractively. What the repentance of non-arising empties is exactly the grasping of the other five gates — it empties that bit of clinging to substantiality in "the I who is mindful and the Buddha who is recollected," "the I who gives and the gift that is given," "the I who keeps and the precept that is kept." It is the one subtractive gate in the whole sequence. This is also why repentance must be placed within the sequence rather than outside it: only with one subtractive gate, emptying away one by one the graspings the other gates have built up, does the whole road avoid congealing upon the subtle conceit of self in "I am practicing."

It is here, too, that the "receiving is not absolution" running through the whole volume is raised to "emptiness is not absolution." From the volume's opening, the "receiving" of disclosure — the monk "receiving" the offense he has spoken — was already not a being-pardoned by anyone: it was the self-benefiting act of taking up a burden, with no absolving officer present. Walking all this way, that crimson thread reaches its summit here: at the repentance of non-arising, even the "really-existent transgression" that could be absolved is seen to be unapprehendable from the first — and if there is no real transgression, where is the absolver of transgression? Emptiness is a seeing, not a remission. There is no absolution in the repentance of non-arising, because no one was ever bound.

5.1 "If Transgression Is Empty, Then Anything Goes" — A Millennium-Old Fear to Be Met Head-On

To write that transgression has no own-being is to stand at the edge of the most dangerous slope: the reader (and the writing itself) can all too easily slide from "transgression cannot be apprehended" into "transgression is a fiction, causation is of no account, do as you please." This fear is no idle worry — it has real precedents in the history of religion. Paul's justification by faith was once misread as a licence to sin (antinomianism); the history of Chan, too, has its "wild Chan" excess, abandoning practice on the pretext that there was "originally not one thing." The fear that "if transgression is empty, then anything goes" has its reasons, and must not be made light of.

But the antidote to this fear lies in the very same passage of Vimalakīrti's rebuke of Upāli:

Deluded thought is defilement; no deluded thought is purity… One who knows this is called a keeper of the Vinaya; one who knows this is called one who truly understands.⁹

"One who knows this is called a keeper of the Vinaya" — one who knows that transgression's nature is empty is the true keeper of the rule. This sentence turns the whole fear of antinomianism inside out: to see that transgression has no own-being is not to have been issued a licence to abolish the precepts, but to have reached the highest fulfilment of keeping them. Why so? Because to grasp transgression as a really-existent substance — one that accrues, that waits to be paid off — this grasping is itself "deluded thought," is itself "defilement." The truly clean keeping of the Vinaya is the keeping that has seen through even this grasping. One who grasps transgression as real is, conversely, bound by transgression's "sense of being real," and so falls into fear, or into calculation, or into advancing and retreating within the bookkeeping of repayment. Only one who knows that transgression's nature is empty moves, in conduct, unpulled by the mark of transgression — and this is the keeping of the Vinaya that is "no deluded thought is purity."

And so, between "emptiness" and "licence" lies the whole of the Middle Way. "Neither apprehending transgression nor non-transgression" is a double negation — it neither grasps transgression as really existent, nor falls into the annihilationist view of "no transgression at all." What it negates is the own-being of transgression, not the karmic fruit of action. Transgression's nature is empty; karmic fruit is not empty: the dependently-arisen law that one reaps what one sows is not moved by a hair. Carrying forward the undertone of the salt-parable from the earlier paper — even an ideal phenomenal repentance can only dilute and redirect the trajectory of the fruit, never erase already-made karma out of thin air — at the summit of principial repentance this line is not loosened but drawn tighter still. Each time the writing arrives at "transgression cannot be apprehended," it should ask itself one question: does this sentence imply that karmic fruit is being swept away? If it does, it has already slipped off the Middle Way. Emptiness is the seeing that transgression has no own-being; it is not the annihilation of cause and effect — this is the highest point this paper has to guard.

VI. Conclusion: Three Mirrors; Summiting Without Discarding the Ladder

Set the repentance of non-arising back before three mirrors of the West, and its contour shows the more sharply.

First, the ontology of sin. The Augustinian tradition regards sin as a kind of ontological pollution — an ontological stain, a reality that needs to be absolved, to be cleansed away. This tradition shares with the repentance of non-arising one seriousness: that wrongdoing must be faced all the way to the bottom, never lightly let go. The divergence lies underneath: what the repentance of non-arising sees is that transgression has, from the first, no such own-being-substance to be polluted, no substance waiting to be absolved and cleansed. And so "emptiness is not absolution": here there is no absolver, because under insight there is no real transgression to absolve. It must be said that this contrast is drawn only at the level of doctrinal structure, with no wish to belittle any tradition's grave regard for the gravity of wrongdoing.

Second, the fear of antinomianism. This mirror has already been held up, face-on, in the chapter above: the millennium-old dread that "if transgression is empty, then anything goes" is overturned by Vimalakīrti's "one who knows this is called a keeper of the Vinaya" — to know emptiness is not to abolish the Vinaya, but to bring the keeping of it to its consummation. No need to belabor it here; it is marked only as already resolved.

Third, the therapeutic notion of "self-forgiveness." Contemporary psychological vocabulary often seats the terminus of repentance in the emotional release of "letting oneself off the hook" (self-forgiveness). The mark-free repentance looks near to this but is, in truth, far from it: it is not the loosening of a taut self-reproach, the granting of oneself an emotional absolution, but the seeing of the "sun of wisdom" — a turn of the cognition of prajñā (noetic), not the easing of an emotional tension (affective). Frost and dew melt because the sunlight reaches what has no body in which to abide — not because someone wipes them away for you, and not because you have at last decided to forgive yourself. This boundary is exactly where the volume's crimson thread against therapeuticization is cashed out at its deepest point.

Three sentences, at the last, to set this paper in its place within the whole shape of the mountain.

First: this paper lays out the shape; later papers carve the stone. The full narrative of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa's disciples chapter, the faculty-by-faculty real mark of the Samantabhadra-contemplation Sūtra's six-faculty repentance, the line-by-line concordance of the Heart Sūtra with the gate of repentance, and the final meeting of repentance and prajñā — all are reserved for later papers to mine. This paper only traces the whole contour of "the repentance of non-arising."

Second: summiting without discarding the ladder. From the most concrete scene of the Vinaya's disclosure to the most thoroughgoing seeing of the repentance of non-arising is a one-directional arc, from the phenomenal into the principial; what the reader has lived through is "repentance, from an act, becoming a seeing." But to climb to the summit of principial repentance does not abolish the ladder of phenomenal repentance — the ladder is lent support, not replaced. Disclosure must still be disclosed; the rite is still the rite; only the one who performs all of this has seen that there was never, within it, a self that was bound.

Third: three signposts, pointing down the road ahead. The uncontaminated precept-essence formed from emptiness (the precept-essence that neither arises nor ceases) — its detail belongs to the gate of precepts; the wisdom of the patience of non-arising aroused within meditative absorption — its detail belongs to the gate of concentration; and the anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi — unsurpassed perfect awakening — toward which "the host of transgressions like frost and dew" finally bends, is the home this whole road will at last cash out where the gate of vow sets down its pen.

The sun of wisdom shines once, and the frost and dew are gone of themselves. It is not that someone absolved your transgression. It is that you have, at last, seen: the self that erred, and the transgression it committed, were from the very first non-arising.

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Series Cross-References

• Part I (the parsing of three terms / concealment and emergence from offense): the "I" and the "offense" within disclosure's "I, so-and-so, committed such-and-such an offense" are here seen to be, from the first, unapprehendable — the question on which the foundation of phenomenal repentance rested is answered face-on at the summit of principial repentance.
• Parts II–VI (the faces of phenomenal repentance): the first six parts treated the traffic of purity and defilement in transgression; this paper climbs to the summit of principial repentance. The summiting lends support to phenomenal repentance, it does not replace it; phenomenal repentance has its own real, cleansing power.
• Part V (the three repentances): this paper redeems the summit of the ladder erected there — "repentance by contemplating non-arising, supporting wisdom"; the earlier paper named it but held its substance in reserve (zero content), and here it is unfolded face-on.
• The "receiving is not absolution" line: carried forward from the fifth paper (King Ajātaśatru, repentance's limit-case) and the ninth (the precept-seam), it rises here to "emptiness is not absolution" — there being no real transgression to absolve, and no absolver of transgression present.
• The salt-parable of "karmic fruit can be turned but not erased": carried forward from the fifth paper, it draws the line "emptiness does not sweep away karmic fruit" tighter still at the summit where transgression has no own-being (emptiness is not annihilation).
• Part VII (forthcoming): the full narrative of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa's disciples chapter, the faculty-by-faculty real mark of the Samantabhadra-contemplation Sūtra's six-faculty repentance, the line-by-line concordance of the Heart Sūtra with the gate of repentance, and the final meeting of repentance and prajñā — all reserved for later papers to mine; this paper only lays out the shape.
• The uncontaminated precept-essence formed from emptiness → the gate of precepts (carried forward from the ninth paper); the wisdom of the patience of non-arising aroused within meditative absorption → the gate of concentration; anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi → the gate of vow (cashed out where the volume sets down its pen).

Footnotes

1. Zhiyi, Shi chan boluomi cidi famen (Explanation of the Sequential Approach to the Dhyāna-pāramitā), fasc. 2 — "repentance by procedure supports the precepts… repentance by contemplating non-arising supports wisdom, and thereby clarifies repentance" — Sui · Zhiyi (expounded), Taishō vol. 46, No. 1916 (CBETA T46n1916《釋禪波羅蜜次第法門》T46, No. 1916View on CBETA online reader ↗, 0485c01). ↩

2. Shi chan boluomi cidi famen, fasc. 2 — "know, then, that the deep contemplation of non-arising is named the great repentance, the most honored and most sublime among all repentances… apart from this contemplation, none can be named the great Vaipulya repentance" — Taishō vol. 46, No. 1916 (CBETA T46n1916《釋禪波羅蜜次第法門》T46, No. 1916View on CBETA online reader ↗, 0486b18). This ranking as "most honored and most sublime" is Tiantai's doctrinal-classification stance, not self-evident in the sūtra text; the body has flagged this. ↩

3. Sūtra on the Contemplation of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Guan Puxian pusa xingfa jing) — "the whole sea of karmic obstruction is born from deluded thought; if you would repent, sit upright and contemplate the real mark. The host of transgressions are like frost and dew; the sun of wisdom can dissolve them. Therefore, with a wholehearted mind, repent the six faculties of feeling" — Song · Dharmamitra (Tanwumiduo) trans., Taishō vol. 9, No. 277 (CBETA T09n0277《佛說觀普賢菩薩行法經》Samantabhadra-bodhisattva-dhyāna-cārya-dharma-sūtraT9, No. 277Dharmamitra (Liu Song, 424–442 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, 0393b10). ↩

4. Sūtra on the Contemplation of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra — "contemplate the mind as no-mind, it arises from inverted thought… my own mind is empty, transgression and merit have no owner… named the repentance free of the mark of transgression" — Taishō vol. 9, No. 277 (CBETA T09n0277《佛說觀普賢菩薩行法經》Samantabhadra-bodhisattva-dhyāna-cārya-dharma-sūtraT9, No. 277Dharmamitra (Liu Song, 424–442 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, 0392c24). ↩

5. Variant collation: Zhiyi's Shi chan boluomi cidi famen quotes this verse as "born by deluded thought" and "with a sincere mind," differing slightly from the Samantabhadra-contemplation Sūtra's own "born from deluded thought" and "with a wholehearted mind." The body of this paper quotes the verse in the sūtra's own words; where Zhiyi's citation is reported, it is marked as a citation, and the two must not be conflated. ↩

6. Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra (Weimojie suoshuo jing), upper fascicle, "Disciples" chapter — "the nature of that transgression is neither within, nor without, nor in between… as the mind is, so is the defilement of transgression, so are all dharmas — none departing from suchness" — Yao Qin · Kumārajīva trans., Taishō vol. 14, No. 475 (CBETA T14n0475《維摩詰所說經》Vimalakīrti-nirdeśaT14, No. 475Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 406 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, 0541b16). ↩

7. Shi chan boluomi cidi famen, fasc. 2 — "neither apprehending transgression nor non-transgression; contemplating that transgression is non-arising shatters all transgression, for all transgressions are rooted in emptiness, ever pure" — Taishō vol. 46, No. 1916 (CBETA T46n1916《釋禪波羅蜜次第法門》T46, No. 1916View on CBETA online reader ↗, 0486b10). ↩

8. Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya Sūtra) — "all dharmas are marked with emptiness: neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing" — Tang · Xuanzang trans., Taishō vol. 8, No. 251 (CBETA T08n0251《般若波羅蜜多心經》Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdayaT8, No. 251Xuanzang (Tang, 649 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, 0848c08). ↩

9. Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra, upper fascicle, "Disciples" chapter — "deluded thought is defilement, no deluded thought is purity… one who knows this is called a keeper of the Vinaya; one who knows this is called one who truly understands" — Taishō vol. 14, No. 475 (CBETA T14n0475《維摩詰所說經》Vimalakīrti-nirdeśaT14, No. 475Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 406 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, 0541b28). ↩