Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (29)

All dharmas are false and unreal

All dharmas arise from nothingness, and after destruction there is again nothing—not even dust, not even the tiniest quark particle. Such is the falseness of the world. The world, vast as it is, has all been destroyed; there is nothing left to cling to, let alone our small bodies, which are even more easily destroyed—all dharmas are far too false and unreal. The entire process of the formation of our life, from nothing at all to a fertilized egg, to our birth, growing from a child into an adult, this shell of over a hundred jin, and at the end of life this hundred-odd jin disperses again—what remains? Nothing at all, only a little ash of bones; after a long time, even the bone ash is gone. Who could find the bone ash of our past lives? It cannot be found. Therefore the entire five-aggregate life body, and the whole universe of empty space, are vast and empty, and cannot be clung to.