Different Levels of Wisdom Result in Different Depths of Realization

Each dharma contains meanings at different levels, and people of different wisdom will naturally have different levels of understanding. Followers of the Small Vehicle understand it as the emptiness of scattering, decay, and destruction; followers of the Great Vehicle, in addition to this, add the emptiness (śūnyatā) of the tathāgatagarbha; bodhisattvas on the bhūmis and the Buddha see form as the operation of the seeds of the four great elements, which is even more empty. Material form itself is an empty mark; this profound principle is absolutely impossible for pre-bhūmi bodhisattvas (pūrvabhūmika bodhisattva) to observe, and they cannot truly understand its actual content, whereas the Buddhas observe form all the way down to its deepest source. Newly enlightened bodhisattvas can only understand form as something produced by the eighth consciousness of emptiness (śūnyatā); their power of observation is weak, and their understanding contains much conjecture.

However, impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and non-self mainly refer to the Small Vehicle's dharma of scattering, perishing, and destruction. From the aforementioned impermanence of form, one realizes that form is suffering; then one realizes that form scatters and decays and will not remain long; finally, one will realize that form is not the unscattering, undecaying subject representing the self that we have believed in since beginningless kalpas.