The Perfect Brightness Illuminates the Locus; When the Locus is Established, the Nature of Illumination Ceases

The Surangama Sutra states: When the perfectly bright Bodhi light illuminates the dharmas from which it arises, if one clings to those dharmas as truly existent, as real and indestructible, as "self" or "belonging to self," then it is like a leaf blocking the view—one perceives the illusory and fails to see the true, obscuring the radiance of the inherently wondrous, luminous true mind. Thus, the cycle of birth and death continues unceasingly.

Using chalk to write characters on a blackboard, what are those characters? They are all composed of chalk dust. If you recognize only the characters and not the dust, the chalk dust itself becomes obscured. The chalk represents the inherently pure mind, the perfectly wondrous luminous true mind. The chalk dust represents the inherent luminous nature. The characters written on the blackboard represent worldly phenomena. The blackboard represents the mundane realm.