Selected Lectures on the Sutra of the Father and Son Compendium (XXI)

Your Majesty, the characteristic of the wind element.

Its arising has no source; its cessation has no destination. When it arises, it is fundamentally empty; when it ceases, it is also empty. Because its self-nature is empty, it has no male characteristic nor female characteristic. It is merely revealed through verbal designation. Thus, the wind element and the nature of the wind element are both ungraspable. Only the Buddha's perfect wisdom can fully comprehend this.

Explanation: Your Majesty, the characteristic of the wind element: when it arises, it comes from nowhere; when it ceases, it goes nowhere. This illustrates that when wind arises, it is empty; when it ceases, it is also empty. The self-nature of wind is empty. The wind element has no male characteristic and no female characteristic; it lacks distinctions of male or female. However, when the wind element forms a physical body, distinctions between male and female characteristics appear. Therefore, the characteristics of male and female are also empty and illusory. The self-nature of the wind element is empty; it is merely designated through words to describe the wind element, lacking any substantial essence. Thus, it is said that the wind element and the nature of the wind element are both ungraspable. This principle can only be fully understood by the Buddha's wisdom, the Buddha's perfect knowledge.

Although the wind element itself has no male or female characteristics, if a person creates the karma of a man, they will be born with a male physical body. If they create the karma of a woman, they will be born with a female physical body. If a woman can create the karma of a great man (a true man of strength and virtue), in the next life she will transform into a male physical body. If a man acts like a woman and possesses a woman’s disposition, storing such karmic seeds in the Tathāgatagarbha, in the next life he will transform into a female physical body. The karmic retribution body transforms according to the karmic actions and seeds. What can be transformed is illusory, not real—it is without self. Only the Tathāgatagarbha is eternally unchanging; it is the true reality, the essential substance of mind.