How to Practice Taking the Dharma as the Guide Rather than Relying on Persons

Relying on the Dharma means purely trusting and accepting in accordance with the true reality of the Buddha's teachings as they are, being able to judge accurately whether a teaching is right or wrong—if it is right, rely on it and cultivate and study it; if it is wrong, steer clear of it and do not study it, and pass this on to fellow practitioners and study companions. If you can judge whether a teaching is right or wrong, then you need not pay special attention to whether an author's name is famous, nor concern yourself with who the person is—focus only on the meaning of the Dharma. If the meaning of the Dharma is true and correct, even if the author is labeled as Māra Pāpīyas, you should pay no heed; if the meaning of the Dharma is mostly wrong view, even if it is labeled with the name of Śākyamuni Buddha, you should take no interest in it.

For those who truly wish to cultivate and study the unsurpassed Dharma by relying on the Dharma and not on persons: if we were to label a Buddhist sutra with the name of Māra Pāpīyas, claiming it was written by Pāpīyas, and then label the Dharma taught by Pāpīyas with the Buddha's name and treat it as a Buddhist sutra, how would you judge the content within? How would you treat these two kinds of Dharma meanings? If we were to scramble the names of the authors of all these texts and writings, or label them all as anonymous, how then should you treat the content of these texts?