The Opening of the Eyes

Chapter14(Indicating that The Larger Wisdom Sutra, etc. rebuked the people of two vehicle)

The Larger Wisdom Sutra reads: “All you sons of gods, if you have not yet conceived a desire for perfect enlightenment, now is the time to do so. If you should once enter the realm of the enlightenment of voice-hearers, you would no longer be capable of conceiving such a desire for perfect enlightenment. Why is this? Because you would be outside the world of birth and death, which itself would constitute an obstacle.” This passage indicates that the Buddha³⁶ is not pleased with the persons of the two vehicles because they do not conceive the desire for perfect enlightenment, but that he is pleased with the heavenly beings because they do conceive such a desire.

The Shūramgama Sutra states: “If a person who has committed the five cardinal sins should hear of this shūramgama meditation and should conceive the desire for supreme enlightenment, then he would still be capable of attaining Buddhahood. But, World-Honored One, an arhat who has put an end to outflows is like a broken vessel, and will never be capable of receiving and upholding this meditation.”³⁷

The Vimalakīrti Sutra says, “Those who give alms to you are cultivating for themselves no field of good fortune. Those who give alms to you will fall into the three evil paths.” This passage means that the human and heavenly beings who give alms to the sage monks such as Mahākāshyapa and Shāriputra will invariably fall into the three evil paths. Sage monks such as these, one would suppose, must be the eyes of the human and heavenly beings and the leaders of all living beings, second only to the Buddha himself. It must have been very much against common expectation that the Buddha spoke out time and again against such men before the great assemblies of human and heavenly beings, as we have seen him do. Was he really trying to reprimand his own disciples to death? In addition, he employed countless different metaphors in expressing his condemnation of the persons of the two vehicles, calling them donkey’s milk as compared to cow’s milk, clay vessels as compared to vessels of gold, or the glimmer of a firefly as compared to the light of the sun.

He did not speak of this in one word or two, in one day or two, in one month or two, in one year or two, or in one sutra or two, but over a period of more than forty years, in countless sutras, addressing himself to great assemblies of countless persons, condemning the persons of the two vehicles without a single extenuating word. Thus everyone learned that his condemnation was true. Heaven learned it and earth learned it. Not only one or two, but hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of people; the heavenly beings, dragon gods, and the asuras of the threefold world; all the human and heavenly beings, persons of the two vehicles, and great bodhisattvas gathered in assembly from the five regions of India, the four continents, the six heavens of the world of desire, the worlds of form and formlessness, and the worlds of the ten directions, and learned and heard of it. Then all these beings returned to their own lands, explaining the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha of the sahā world one by one to the inhabitants of their respective lands, so that there was not a single being in the countless worlds of the ten directions who did not understand that Mahākāshyapa, Shāriputra, and those like them would never attain Buddhahood, and that it was wrong to give them alms and support.