Twenty Kinds of Inferential Contemplation on Emptiness

The twenty kinds of emptiness in the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras are extremely difficult to understand; now let us use an analogy to facilitate understanding. Suppose there is an infinitely large container whose edges cannot be seen, within which there are seven kinds of particles of different colors, each kind existing in countless quantities, freely combinable to assemble innumerable objects.

For example, using five of these particles, according to a puzzle pattern within the container, one assembles a fresh flower. Observe this flower: if our gaze—or what may be called our attention—falls one-sidedly only upon the flower's image and outward appearance, we will see the flower's colors and features, and thereby know the flower's attributes and properties, while remaining ignorant and blind to everything else. Such cognition has an enormous bias, and the attachments born from it are useless and futile. If we can set aside the flower's external appearance and observe its composition and texture in fine detail, we will know that this flower is in fact a combination of five particles—its substance is just the five particles. The flower is a phantom, a false image; in reality it is not even a phantom or a false image—it is merely a mixture, a combination of the five particles.

The particles reside within the container, and the assembled flower does not go beyond the container. Whether the flower arises or ceases, the particles remain as they were, their quantity unchanged; the container neither moves nor changes, unaffected in any way. If viewed with bias, it seems there is such a thing as the flower arising and ceasing, but in reality there is no such thing—it does not even count as an illusion. The same applies to assembling a five-aggregates body from the seven kinds of particles according to a puzzle pattern: there is no substantial appearance of a five-aggregates body, not even a transformed illusory image; there is no existence of phenomena such as the arising, abiding, changing, and ceasing of the five-aggregates body. Arising, abiding, changing, and ceasing leave no trace whatsoever, yet sentient beings, in their foolishness and biased attachment, cling to them—uselessly and futilely. Whether the five-aggregates body arises, abides, changes, or ceases, it does not go beyond the container; the container does not move and is unaffected in any way.

The container is an analogy for the tathāgatagarbha; the seven kinds of particles are an analogy for the seeds of the seven great elements within the tathāgatagarbha; the puzzle pattern is an analogy for the karmic seeds stored within the tathāgatagarbha—the pattern, once used up, disappears and becomes void; the flower and the five-aggregates body are an analogy for all the dharmas born from the tathāgatagarbha. Contemplating the twenty kinds of emptiness in the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras against this analogy, one should have a point of entry: as long as one's contemplation falls into any kind of worldly dharma-mark, that is wrong understanding and wrong view (mithyā-dṛṣṭi), which should be abandoned. Only by observing without falling into worldly dharma-marks can correct view and the wisdom of ultimate reality arise. In the end, emptying all that exists—even emptiness itself is emptied—emptied so cleanly that nothing remains, one reaches the utterly ultimate and attains the nirvāṇa of tranquility.

Contemplating in this manner by inference, when one then reads all the Mahāyāna sūtras, one should be able to easily understand the ultimate meaning and true meaning of the Dharma taught by the Buddha, and there will be a point of entry for practice. In the end, even if the Dharma is understood and comprehended, to put it to use one must realize it directly; to realize it directly one must cultivate in earnest. All the dharmas the Buddha required to be cultivated—the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment, the bodhisattvas' six pāramitās, the five precepts and ten wholesome deeds, and so on—must each be actually practiced, without skipping stages or omitting any; otherwise one cannot realize them directly, the Dharma one has understood and comprehended cannot be put to use, birth and death will still be birth and death, and suffering will still be suffering.

Take any dharma whatsoever, contemplate it against this analogy, and one will quickly enter into it. The Buddha's Dharma is the One Vehicle dharma, without a second, without another. The cultivation and realization of practitioners of the Two Vehicles remain at the stage of clinging to worldly dharma-marks—considering dharma-marks to exist, or considering dharma-marks to not exist—neither is ultimate. Dharma-marks neither exist nor do not exist; both existence and nonexistence are conceptual proliferation (prapañca). Therefore practitioners of the Two Vehicles fear the worldly five aggregates, fear birth and death, and hide in nirvāṇa without remainder—this is entirely clinging to marks. Thus the Four Noble Truths and the dharma of the twelve links of dependent origination are all empty and unreal—calculations upon false appearances, clinging to the illusion of a bow's reflection in a cup mistaken for a snake. Therefore the non-self of the five aggregates and nirvāṇa without remainder are also empty; they are expedient provisions for dispelling the worldly "existence"—emptying the worldly "nonexistence"—but both existence and nonexistence are wrong. The non-self of persons and the non-self of dharmas are also expedient provisions: self is empty, non-self is also empty; there is originally only the one true dharma realm—apart from it there are no dharmas. The nature and marks of all dharmas are all empty and unattainable, and emptiness and unattainability are also empty. When one has emptied everything so cleanly that not a single dharma remains to confront the mind, one attains the ultimate nirvāṇa of tranquility, and there is nothing more to be done.