Prince Glazed Light's Account of His Own Cultivation and Realization Experience

Original text:无量声佛开示菩萨本觉妙明，观此世界及众生身，皆是妄缘风力所转。我于尔时，观界安立，观世动时，观身动止，观心动念，诸动无二，等无差别。我时觉了此群动性，来无所从，去无所至。十方微尘颠倒众生，同一虚妄。

如是乃至三千大千一世界内所有众生，如一器中貯百蚊蚋，啾啾乱鸣，于分寸中鼓发狂闹。逢佛未几，得无生忍。尔时心开，乃见东方不动佛国，为法王子，事十方佛。身心发光，洞彻无碍。佛问圆通，我以观察风力无依，悟菩提心，入三摩地。合十方佛传一妙心，斯为第一。

Explanation: Bodhisattvas at the tenth bhūmi and above are Dharma Princes; before long they will accomplish the Buddha Way and inherit the Buddha's position. Here the formation of the trichiliocosm is introduced: it is formed from the seeds of the four great elements—earth, water, fire, and wind—within the intrinsically awakened wondrous luminosity of all sentient beings' minds. In accordance with the delusive karmic conditions of all sentient beings, the great chiliocosm is produced. The physical bodies of sentient beings are likewise formed when the intrinsically awakened mind, in accordance with each sentient being's individual karmic conditions, outputs the seeds of the four great elements to form that being's individual physical body.

The movement and operation of the great chiliocosm is the function of the wind element within the intrinsically awakened mind of all sentient beings, while the movements and activities of sentient beings' physical bodies, and their bodily, verbal, and mental actions, are the result of sentient beings' own delusive karmic conditions together with the function of the wind element within the intrinsically awakened mind. The establishment of the great chiliocosm, the changes throughout the past, present, and future, the movements and activities of sentient beings' physical bodies, and the thoughts arising from sentient beings' conscious minds—all these dynamic natures are not two; they are without difference.

Why are they without difference? Because in substance they are all the function of the wind element within sentient beings' intrinsically awakened minds. Why is there the function of the wind element? It is because sentient beings have delusive karmic conditions. Once there is karma, when the conditions manifest, a result must be produced—and the result is ceaseless movement and transmigration. And after this karma is created, it is stored within the intrinsically awakened mind. The wind element is also one of the seed-functions within the intrinsically awakened mind.

If sentient beings have no karma and the conditions do not manifest, the four great elements within the intrinsically awakened mind do not function, and there is no establishment, founding, or formation of a world; nor would sentient beings have the production of physical bodies. However, bodhisattvas, in order to accomplish the Buddha Way and extensively deliver sentient beings, cannot extinguish all conditions either; they must still retain something to obtain a physical body and cultivate the path. The sentient beings in the ten directions, numerous as dust motes, are all deluded, all produced by the same kind of delusive karmic conditions.

Sentient beings are chiefly deluded in that their cognition of themselves and of external things is incorrect, thereby giving rise to incorrect bodily, verbal, and mental actions; then karma exists and is stored in the intrinsically awakened mind, and upon encountering conditions, karmic retribution follows. Thus, all the sentient beings within the trichiliocosm are like a hundred mosquitoes kept in a single vessel, buzzing and chirping chaotically. The sentient beings of our Southern Jambudvīpa on this earth are likewise like crickets kept in a box, chirping and clamoring. In truth, they are all stirring up wild commotion within their own minds—making a great racket, in great disorder.

Because sentient beings refuse to settle their minds, and because they generate incorrect mental engagement and thinking toward the world and themselves, various views, opinions, awarenesses, feelings, judgments, thoughts, and notions arise within their minds. Since all of these are incorrect, and each has its own particular incorrectness, divergences and disputes arise, and this world becomes chaotic and complicated, full of strife and clamor. All these disputes, views, feelings, discriminations, and false perceptions are but floating dust upon sentient beings' minds; they are images manifested upon the mind, and are not real.

Then how do these images manifest? How do the marks of sense-objects arise from within the mind? Through cultivation and realization, the Dharma Prince Vaidūryābhā (Crystal Light) came to know this principle, realized the intrinsically awakened wondrous luminosity, and attained the patience of non-arising. Afterward, through deep cultivation, he became a bodhisattva of the tenth bhūmi and stage of near-perfect enlightenment, able to penetrate body and mind and the world without obstruction. His method of perfect penetration was to contemplate the source of the wind element's function: it comes from nowhere and goes nowhere—it is all the tathāgatagarbha nature, the nature of intrinsically awakened wondrous luminosity. He entered the samādhi of the intrinsically awakened mind, in which both phenomena and principle accord with the pure wondrous mind transmitted by all the Buddhas of the ten directions, and do not contradict the intrinsically awakened mind. If one contradicts it, that is mistaken awakening—awakening to what is wrong.