The Nature and Origin of the World

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Dharma Prince of Lapis Lazuli Light (Vaidūryaprabha) says: Countless kalpas ago, the Buddha of Immeasurable Sound appeared in the world and instructed the bodhisattvas that the original enlightenment of the Buddhas and sentient beings is extremely subtle and wondrously keen; from this wondrously bright true mind of original enlightenment, the world and sentient beings were derived; the world and the bodies of sentient beings were all transformed into being through false conditions, like the power of wind.

After I heard the Buddha's instruction, I contemplated how the eighteen realms are established, contemplated how the eighteen realms flow from life to life to form time, contemplated how the five aggregates of a sentient being's body operate from emptiness into existence, and contemplated how sentient beings' minds give birth to thoughts. Upon contemplating, I found that whether it is the movement of the realms or the flow of time, whether the movement of the body or the movement of the mind, these movements have no second mark—they are equal and without difference. Contemplating to this point, I suddenly perceived that the moving nature of all these dharmas comes from nowhere and goes nowhere, and that the sentient beings as numerous as dust motes in the ten directions are all equally illusory. All the sentient beings within a single world of the trichiliocosm are like a hundred mosquitoes stored in one vessel, chirping and clamoring chaotically, agitating and raging noisily within their own minds like drums.

The above passage introduces what the world is and how it appears. It first introduces the realms (dhātus). "Realms" refers to the distinctions and categories of all dharmas. All dharmas in the world, according to their different categories, are divided into eighteen boundaries of dharmic distinction: the six sense faculties, the six sense objects, and the six consciousnesses—that is, the inner and outer bodies of sentient beings; all dharmas are included therein. The inner and outer bodies of sentient beings flow ceaselessly through birth and death, thereby forming past, present, and future lives; thus the world is formed. From this we know that the world is the process of the birth-and-death flowing of sentient beings' five aggregates and eighteen realms; the five aggregates and eighteen realms are the master of the world, and the master's ceaseless flowing through birth and death is called the world.

The movement of the world and the movement of the five aggregates of body and mind are phenomena that appear because false conditions agitate them like the power of wind; and the false conditions and the power of wind appear due to sentient beings' wondrously bright mind of original enlightenment. Therefore, the world of sentient beings is illusory: there is no world, no sentient beings, not even empty space. The world is not anything; sentient beings are not anything; only original enlightenment stands solitary, seeming to be something, yet in fact, within worldly dharmas, it is nothing at all.