Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (80)

When bodily, verbal, and mental actions are first carried out, they cease and pass away in an instant. For example, if I take up a knife to kill someone, once the knife is picked up, the action of picking it up is gone; in the next step, the hand reaches out, and afterward the action of reaching out is gone; in the next step, the knife is thrust into the other person's body, and afterward this action too disappears; in the next step, the knife is withdrawn, and the action vanishes; in the next step, the knife is thrown away or washed, and the action again disappears. The act of killing is carried out as a continuous series of actions: when the next movement arises, the previous one ceases. After all the actions have ceased, has the act of killing actually disappeared or not? If this action did not cease, the killing would have to go on forever, which is impossible—every action must come to an end at some point. An action itself ceases as soon as it is completed; therefore it is subject to arising and ceasing, utterly unattainable. Yet the seeds do not disappear: instant after instant they must be stored in the tathāgatagarbha, awaiting the ripening of conditions in the future for the retribution to be received.

The performance of an action ceases and passes away in an instant, extremely fast. In each instant there are eighty-one thousand seeds arising and ceasing, arising and ceasing, arising and ceasing, and only then is the entire act of killing formed. Therefore the act of killing is entirely subject to arising and ceasing, yet this whole action is stored as a karmic seed in one's own tathāgatagarbha. In a finger snap, in a single instant, eighty-one thousand seeds have arisen and ceased; countless phenomena of arising and ceasing form this one finger snap, so the finger snap as a dharma is illusory. And the act of killing is a dharma strung together from countless finger-snap durations, composed of countless actions similar to a finger snap; thus the act of killing is also illusory, subject to arising and ceasing, and without self. By contemplating in this way, one can realize the Small Vehicle's emptiness of body.

One can likewise contemplate the seeds of the conscious mind arising and ceasing instant by instant; countless instants of arising and ceasing constitute the mind consciousness's continuous discriminating and acting, so the conscious mind is subject to arising and ceasing, illusory, and without self. In this way one can realize the emptiness of mind. With the emptiness of body plus the emptiness of mind, the five aggregates are empty and without self, and the first fruit of the Small Vehicle is realized.

While carrying out this contemplative practice to eliminate self-view, one can continue the contemplation: how is this whole series of actions—killing someone—actually carried out? One can contemplate it from the action of a finger snap: within a single finger snap, how can those eighty-one thousand seeds come forth? How is the snap performed? And how does the tathāgatagarbha record the karmic actions? Contemplating in this way, those with good meditative concentration realize awakening very quickly. With someone to guide the way, one may realize awakening in a few minutes; without a guide, it takes ten thousand or eighty thousand kalpas. To attain the fruit, when the conditions are ripe, it takes only a single instant; when the conditions are not ripe, one remains deluded and disoriented in the six realms for hundreds of thousands of millions of kalpas.

Although karmic actions cease and pass away in an instant, these karmic actions do not abide in the east, west, south, north, the four intermediate directions, above, below, or the middle—they simply disappear in this way. For example, I raise my hand and then lower it; observing the karmic action of raising the hand, where does it go when it disappears? The karmic action has disappeared and does not abide anywhere. If it abided somewhere, then in that place I would always be raising my hand; if it were killing, the karmic action of killing would always exist in some place—and that would be terrible indeed.