Lectures on the Sutra of the Compilation of Father and Son (97)

Going All the Way Through Emptiness, One Reaches the City of Nirvana

The consciousness within the physical form is empty, and the karmic actions created are also empty. However, we must not think that because karmic actions are empty, we can freely create evil karma, for the karmic retribution is real. Those who truly know emptiness and realize emptiness fundamentally do not create evil karma. Knowing it is empty, why would one create evil karma for the sake of an empty, unobtainable self? There is absolutely no need to create evil karma; knowing it is empty, one simply does not create it. The consciousness arising in the next life is also empty; the method of extinguishing emptiness is also empty. Life and death themselves are empty—nothing is not empty. Going all the way through emptiness, one reaches the City of Nirvana.

In the creation and flow of karmic actions, there is no creator and no receiver of retribution. I am illusory, you are illusory, he is illusory—all phenomena are illusory; there is no person. The body is false and empty; the conscious mind is false and empty; the five aggregates are false and empty. There is no self, no you, no him, no sentient beings, and thus no karmic actions. The created karmic actions—the actions of body, speech, and mind—are also false and empty. Resolving this entanglement leads to the realization of the fruition.