Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Twenty-Nine)

All dharmas are false and unreal

All dharmas come into being from nothingness, and after destruction there is nothing left—not even dust, not even the tiniest quark particle. This is how illusory the world is. When something as vast as the world is destroyed, there is nothing left to cling to, let alone our small bodies, which are even more easily destroyed—all dharmas are far too false and unreal. The entire process of the formation of our life, from nothingness to a fertilized egg, to our birth, growing from a child into an adult, this body of over a hundred jin, and at the end of life this hundred-plus jin disperses again—what remains? Nothing at all, just a bit of ashes; after a long time, even the ashes are gone. Who could find the ashes of our past lives? They cannot be found. Therefore the entire five-aggregate life-form, the entire universe and empty space, is vast and empty, and cannot be clung to.