Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (113)

佛以一音而说法，众生随类各得解

At night when we fall asleep and dreamless, the six consciousnesses of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind all cease. After they cease, where do they go? When we wake up, these consciousness-minds all appear again — when they appear, where do they come from? In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the World-Honored One says that all dharmas are the nature of tathāgatagarbha. In this Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamasūtra), tathāgatagarbha is not discussed. If tathāgatagarbha-nature were to be expounded, some people, upon hearing it, would be able to attain enlightenment; yet even without expounding tathāgatagarbha-nature, sentient beings can still be led to realize the fruit of emptiness of the arhat, and all can benefit. Some of the sūtras the Buddha taught can both lead people to realize the fruits and lead them to enlightenment — it depends on what indriya the sentient beings possess. Those of Small Vehicle disposition can only awaken to the emptiness of the Small Vehicle; those of Great Vehicle disposition, while awakening to the emptiness of the Great Vehicle — the tathāgatagarbha — can also awaken to the emptiness of the Small Vehicle. With different indriya, the degree of awakening to the Path differs; it lies in the level of wisdom of the person hearing the Dharma.

When the Buddha taught the Dharma, eighty-four thousand people listened to it. Because their wisdom differed, their degrees of understanding differed, the fruits they realized differed, and the retributions they obtained also differed. When the Buddha taught the Dharma, He had no discriminating mind; He taught the same Dharma to all sentient beings. Because sentient beings' faculties differed, the fruits they obtained differed. Those who had committed great evil karma, obstructed by that evil karma, obtained only a rootless faith; those without the obstruction of evil karma could realize the Small Vehicle fruit of the arhat; those with sharper faculties could realize the Great Vehicle bodhisattva fruit; those with even better faculties could realize the patience with the non-arising of dharmas and attain the fruit of a bodhisattva of several bhūmis. Therefore it is said: the Buddha teaches the Dharma with one voice, and sentient beings each gain understanding according to their kind. With the same listening to the Dharma, to what degree one understands and realizes is each sentient being's own affair — the Buddha has no partiality.