The Essence and Origin of the World

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Dharma Prince Vaidūryaprabha said: Countless eons ago, countless Buddha Bhaiṣajyasamudgata... actually, the Buddha Wuliangsheng (Buddha of Countless Sounds) appeared in the world and instructed the bodhisattvas that the original enlightenment of the Buddha and sentient beings is extremely subtle and keenly perceptive; from this wondrously luminous mind of original enlightenment, the world and sentient beings were derived—the world and the bodies of sentient beings were all transformed out through deluded conditions, like the power of the wind.

After I heard the Buddha's instruction, I contemplated how the eighteen realms (dhātus) are established, contemplated how the eighteen realms transmigrate life after life to form time, contemplated how the five aggregates (skandhas) of sentient beings' bodies operate from emptiness into existence, and contemplated how sentient beings' minds give birth to thoughts. After contemplating, I found that whether it was the movement of the realms or the flowing passage of the world, whether the movement of the body or the movement of the mind, these movements had no duality—they were equal and without difference. Contemplating to this point, I suddenly became aware that the dynamic nature of all these dharmas comes from nowhere and goes nowhere; the sentient beings as numerous as dust motes in the ten directions are all equally deluded. All the sentient beings within a single world in the trichiliocosm are like a hundred mosquitoes chirping and buzzing noisily in a stored vessel—stirring, frenzied, and clamorous within one's own mind like a beating drum.

The above text explains what the world is and how it appears. First it introduces the realms (dhātus). The realms refer to the distinctions and categories of all dharmas. All dharmas in the world, according to their different categories, are divided into eighteen kinds of dharmic boundaries of distinction, namely the six sense faculties, the six sense objects, and the six consciousnesses—that is, the inner body and outer body of sentient beings, and all dharmas are included within them. The inner body and outer body of sentient beings continuously transmigrate through birth and death without cease, thereby forming past lives, the present life, and future lives; thus the world is formed. From this we can know that the world is the process of birth-and-death transmigration of sentient beings' five aggregates and eighteen realms; the five aggregates and eighteen realms are the master of the world, and the master's continuous transmigration through birth and death is called the world.

The movement and turning of the world and the movement and turning of the five aggregates, body and mind, are phenomena that appear only because deluded conditions stir them like the power of the wind; and the deluded conditions and the wind's power both arise from sentient beings' wondrously luminous mind of original enlightenment. Therefore, the world of sentient beings is deluded: there is no world, no sentient beings, not even empty space. The world is not anything; sentient beings are not anything either. Only the original enlightenment remains solitary and bare, seeming to be something, yet in fact, within worldly dharmas, it is not anything at all.