Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (192)

Nirvāṇa Is a Manifestation of a State of Tranquility

If we attain nirvāṇa, the worldly dharmas of the three realms have ceased: the five aggregates have ceased, the eighteen realms have ceased, the body has ceased, the mind has ceased, feelings have ceased, thoughts have ceased, the actions and fabrications of body, speech, and mind have ceased—all have ceased, leaving only the Ālayavijñāna, neither arising nor ceasing, tranquil and quiescent. This state is called nirvāṇa. This state in which the five aggregates and eighteen realms have all ceased is itself also empty, and is also subject to arising, ceasing, and change; it is not forever unchanging. In the state of nirvāṇa, too, there is nowhere it comes from and nowhere it goes; there is no one who enters nirvāṇa, and no one who exits nirvāṇa; there is no doer and no receiver.

Therefore nirvāṇa is not a true existence; nirvāṇa is a manifestation of a state of tranquility, just as unreal as the clamorous phenomena of the world—it is illusory and transformed. This state is also empty; only the Ālayavijñāna is not empty, everything else is empty. Nirvāṇa has no mark; even the state of emptiness is empty, and this emptiness does not exist apart from the Ālayavijñāna.

All dharmas have no author and no receiver. When one realizes the fourth fruit of arhatship and enters nirvāṇa, there is no person who realized the fourth fruit, no arhat who entered nirvāṇa, and no arhat who enjoys the bliss of quiescence. Who experiences the bliss of quiescence in nirvāṇa? Can this person be found? In nirvāṇa there is no person, no arhat; if there were, it would not be nirvāṇa. The arhat's material body has ceased, the conscious mind has ceased, the functions of the five aggregates have ceased, the phenomena of the eighteen realms have ceased; therefore in nirvāṇa there is no arhat, no one experiencing the bliss of quiescence.