All Dharmas Are Empty — Is Cause and Effect Empty or Not?

Cause and effect is also one dharma among the myriad dharmas, a temporary phenomenon of an arising-and-ceasing nature. No matter what kind of cause and effect it is, it can change, can arise, and can perish; it has arising, ceasing, and mutation. Therefore cause and effect is illusory and empty. For example, receiving a suffering retribution, receiving a blissful retribution, receiving a neither-suffering-nor-blissful retribution, receiving the retribution of transmigrating through the six realms—once these retributions are fully received, they come to an end; the retribution concludes, and the karmic seeds stored in the tathāgatagarbha also disappear. Anything subject to arising and ceasing is illusory and unreal, and therefore it is empty.

Cause and effect is created and borne by the five aggregates (pañcaskandha) of sentient beings. The five aggregates themselves are empty and illusory, unreal; the karmic causes created are thus subject to arising and ceasing, empty, illusory, and unreal; the retributions received are likewise empty, illusory, and unreal. Cause and effect is a false appearance within the phenomenal realm of worldly dharmas, arising and ceasing in dependence upon the tathāgatagarbha of sentient beings. Among worldly and world-transcending dharmas, only the eighth consciousness, the tathāgatagarbha, is not empty, not arising and not ceasing, unchanging, and never disappearing; everything else has arising, abiding, mutation, and ceasing, and is therefore all illusory and all empty.

Once a karmic retribution has been fully received, it does not continue; only then do other causes and effects appear and come to fruition. Cause and effect, being subject to arising, ceasing, mutation, and unreality, is therefore empty; cause and effect is a dharma born later, which can also vanish and end, and so it is empty; at the very moment cause and effect comes to fruition, it is empty and illusory—it is the eighth consciousness, the tathāgatagarbha, that actualizes the law of cause and effect; on the surface there is existence, but in substance there is nothing. Sentient beings all create karma delusively and receive retribution delusively, suffering in vain. They have never known the illusory nature of suffering itself, still less that the creation of causes of suffering is itself illusory, still less the illusoriness of the fruits of suffering, nor do they know that creating actions of suffering brings fruits of suffering. Not knowing the cause of suffering, not knowing the accumulation of suffering, not knowing the cessation of suffering, and not knowing the practice of the path to the cessation of suffering, sentient beings thus transmigrate through birth and death for countless lifetimes. Only when this transmigration has run its course will they awaken and begin to carefully create their karmic actions.