Different Levels of Wisdom Yield Varied Depths of Realized Truth

Each Dharma possesses different levels of meaning, and individuals with different levels of wisdom will naturally arrive at different levels of understanding. Hearers (Śrāvakas) understand emptiness as the dissolution and destruction of form. Mahāyāna practitioners, in addition to this, incorporate the emptiness of the Tathāgatagarbha. Bodhisattvas on the bhūmis and Buddhas perceive form as nothing more than the operation of the four great elements (mahābhūtas), which is even more profoundly empty. The very nature of form itself is the mark of emptiness. This profound principle is absolutely impossible for bodhisattvas before the bhūmis to observe or to truly comprehend its actual essence. Only the Buddhas observe form, penetrating directly to its fundamental source. Newly enlightened bodhisattvas can only understand form as that which is produced by the eighth consciousness (Ālayavijñāna) characterized by emptiness; their power of observation is weak, and their understanding consists largely of conceptualization.

However, impermanence (anitya), suffering (duḥkha), emptiness (śūnyatā), and non-self (anātman) primarily refer to the Hīnayāna teaching of dissolution, destruction, and decay. From the impermanence of form established earlier, one realizes that form is suffering. Then, one realizes that form is subject to dissolution and decay, not enduring for long. Finally, one realizes that form is not the indestructible entity representing the self that we have mistakenly taken it to be since beginningless time.