The Essence and Origins of the World

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, Prince Glorious Light states: Immeasurable kalpas ago, countless Buddhas named Sound appeared in the world and expounded to the bodhisattvas that the fundamental enlightenment of Buddhas and sentient beings is profoundly subtle and exquisitely luminous. From this wondrously luminous fundamental enlightened true mind, the world and sentient beings arise. Both the world and the bodies of sentient beings are transformed through illusory causes and conditions, like wind force.

After hearing the Buddha's exposition, I contemplated how the eighteen realms are established, observed how the eighteen realms flow through lifetimes to form time, examined how the Five Aggregates of sentient beings' bodies operate from emptiness to existence, and discerned how the minds of sentient beings give rise to thoughts. Through this contemplation, I realized that whether it is the movement of realms or the flux of lifetimes, whether it is the motion of the body or the stirring of the mind, all these movements are without duality—equal and undifferentiated. At this point of realization, I suddenly perceived that the dynamic nature of all phenomena neither comes from anywhere nor goes anywhere; that the countless sentient beings throughout the ten directions, as numerous as motes of dust, are all equally illusory. All sentient beings within a single world of the trichiliocosm are like a hundred mosquitoes buzzing chaotically inside a vessel, their minds drumming restlessly, wildly clamoring within their own consciousness.

The above text explains what the world is and how it arises. First, it introduces "realms" (界), referring to the distinctions and categories of all phenomena. All dharmas in the world are divided into eighteen distinct categorical boundaries based on their differences: the six sense faculties, six sense objects, and six consciousnesses—encompassing both the internal and external aspects of sentient beings. All dharmas are included within these. The continuous cycle of birth and death of sentient beings' internal and external aspects forms past, present, and future lives, thus constituting the world. From this, it is understood that the world is the process of birth-and-death flux of sentient beings' Five Aggregates and eighteen realms. The Five Aggregates and eighteen realms are the master of the world, and this master's continuous cycle of birth and death is called the world.

The movement of the world and the stirring of the Five Aggregates body-mind are phenomena arising due to illusory causes and conditions that agitate like wind force. Yet these illusory conditions and wind force themselves emerge from the sentient beings' fundamentally enlightened, wondrously luminous mind. Therefore, the world of sentient beings is illusory—there is no world, no sentient beings, not even empty space. The world is not any "thing"; sentient beings are not any "thing." Only the fundamental enlightenment stands utterly solitary, seeming to be "something," yet in truth, within worldly phenomena, it is not anything at all.