What Are All Dharma Marks in the World?

In the third volume of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Buddha taught that the seeds of the seven great elements are by nature perfectly fused, originally the tathāgatagarbha, neither arising nor ceasing, pervading the entire dharma realm, luminously and eternally abiding, manifesting according to karma. Since the seeds of the seven great elements are by nature the tathāgatagarbha itself, just like the tathāgatagarbha they neither arise nor cease, neither increase nor decrease, have never been defiled, and are perfectly fused with one another without obstruction, forming the illusory world. Thus the seeds of the seven great elements, like the tathāgatagarbha, neither come nor go, are neither empty nor existent, unchanging and undifferentiated, pure and ever-abiding, yet without any images. Then what are the appearance and nature of the world constituted by the seeds of the seven great elements?

The seeds of the seven great elements are not empty, because they possess functions, operations, and attributes, and can give rise to all dharmas; moreover, they neither arise nor cease, and are truly existent dharmas within the mind-substance of the tathāgatagarbha. Although not empty, they are without marks, possessing none of the worldly conventional marks whatsoever; therefore the eyes of ordinary people cannot see them, cannot perceive them, cannot know them, and so they are called empty—but in truth they are emptiness (śūnyatā).

Since the seeds of the seven great elements are markless and empty, and neither arise nor cease, they cannot be generated out of the tathāgatagarbha, nor can they cease and return into the tathāgatagarbha. The seeds of the seven great elements never go outside the tathāgatagarbha, yet they can form the various worldly dharmas; then markless dharmas cannot form marked dharmas, and the marks of worldly dharmas are likewise empty, markless, and are emptiness (śūnyatā). Furthermore, the tathāgatagarbha is without marks and cannot contain marked dharmas, because they are mutually incompatible; therefore all worldly dharmas manifested by the seven great elements must also be without marks in order to exist within the empty, markless tathāgatagarbha.

Then why do all the worldly dharmas seen by sentient beings appear to have marks? Why do sentient beings see worldly dharmas with marks? For example, sentient beings see a material body of the four great elements, a body of the seven great elements and the five aggregates, walking from place A to place B, with the five aggregates vividly manifesting before them—there is self, there are others, there are objects, there is time, there is space, there is location—everything is there, nothing is missing. What is all this? Why are there the marks of form, the marks of mind, the marks of dharmas? The four great elements and five great elements have never arisen and will not go out of the tathāgatagarbha—so why do the material body with its conventional marks and the various object-marks appear? The element of seeing and the element of consciousness have never arisen and will not go outside the tathāgatagarbha—so why are the worldly marks of mind born and made manifest?

The material body is a false and illusory mark; in reality it does not exist. The body of the five aggregates is a false and illusory mark; in reality it does not exist. Place A and place B are false and illusory marks; in reality they do not exist. Time and space are false and illusory marks; in reality they do not exist. What is seen is illusory; the seeing itself is also illusory; even the illusion is illusory.

Since none of these dharmas has ever arisen, there can be no talk of ceasing. The seeds of the seven great elements have never gone outside the tathāgatagarbha—they have never emerged from the tathāgatagarbha at all—nor have they ever ceased, nor ceased and returned into the tathāgatagarbha. There is simply no such thing. If there were, then there would be dharmas outside the tathāgatagarbha, not belonging to the tathāgatagarbha; then what would be the boundary between such dharmas and the tathāgatagarbha? What would be the relationship between the two? That would be a difficult matter indeed. Since all worldly dharmas have neither arisen nor ceased, who exactly has seen these dharmas arise and these dharmas cease? By what means were they seen? Has the one who saw them ever arisen, and will he cease? Has the process and result of seeing arisen or ceased? What dharma-marks are they?

Within the tathāgatagarbha there is also no such thing as the body of the five aggregates going from place A to place B, no such thing as entering the womb, leaving the womb, or departing the body, no such thing as generating some dharma or extinguishing some dharma. All phenomena and dharma-marks are the false seeing of the seven consciousnesses, an illusory seeing; that is why illusory dharmas are seen. In truth there is no such thing—nothing is happening at all. Everyone go to sleep! If you cannot sleep soundly or sleep with an at-ease mind, then get up and study the Buddhadharma—study and then realize it; try your best to realize the true substance and real mark of all dharmas, and clearly recognize all dharma-marks. In the false play of the world there are fundamentally no people, no play, and no spectators. Then what is it? A dream. It is not even a dream; there is not even a dream. Who sees the dream? Who watches the play? No one.

When at last you truly realize these dharmas, go weep bitterly! For beginningless kalpas we have simply died in vain, pointlessly engaging in so many karmic actions—all manner of grasping and rejecting, craving and attachment, deluded agitation, all manner of afflictions, such painstaking effort, such entanglement—and in the end there was nothing at all. Is that not pitiable?