The Pitiable Plight of Sentient Beings in the Dharma-Ending Age

The virtue of the Dharmakāya is our own pure and perfect Dharmakāya, which can perfectly accomplish all dharmas, with immeasurable merits contained within a single body; the virtue of prajñā is the realm of great wisdom inherent in our true-suchness nature-body, neither empty nor existent, both empty and existent, true emptiness with wondrous existence, possessing both emptiness and existence; the virtue of liberation is the inherent nature of our mind-body, unobstructed within the three realms, abiding in no dharma, clinging to no dharma; though it gives rise to myriad images, it is stained by not a single image, itself pure and bare, attached to nothing.

The virtue of the Dharmakāya is the virtue of prajñā; the virtue of prajñā is the virtue of liberation; the virtue of liberation is the virtue of the Dharmakāya.

Let me ask: are the virtue of the Dharmakāya, the virtue of prajñā, and the virtue of liberation one, two, or three? Apart from the Dharmakāya, is there a virtue of prajñā? Apart from prajñā, is there a virtue of liberation? The Dharmakāya is prajñā, prajñā is liberation, liberation is the Dharmakāya—this is the principle-substance of the Dharmakāya, complete with all dharmas, yet neither one with nor different from all dharmas.

However, the virtue of liberation that some people speak of is a virtue of liberation that arises after cultivation, belonging to the five aggregates and the seven consciousnesses, and is subject to arising and ceasing; what I speak of is the virtue of liberation inherently possessed from the beginning by the true-mind principle-substance, the tathāgatagarbha of the Dharmakāya, which is not bound by any dharma of the three realms—the difference between the two is enormous. The virtue of prajñā that some people speak of is a virtue of prajñā acquired through cultivation by the seven consciousnesses, arising after the fact and subject to arising and ceasing; the virtue of prajñā I speak of is the transcendent great-wisdom prajñā virtue inherently possessed from the beginning by the tathāgatagarbha of one's own mind—the difference between the two is enormous.

The emptiness, provisional existence, and middle way that some people speak of are all emptiness, provisional existence, and middle way acquired after the fact through cultivation by the five aggregates and the seven consciousnesses, subject to arising and ceasing. The true emptiness, provisional existence, and middle way are the middle-way principle-substance of emptiness, provisional existence, and the middle that is inherently possessed from the beginning by the true-nature tathāgatagarbha, unborn and undying.

Once a passage of writing is laid out, one can know what this person's wisdom is like, know whether the dharma-meaning is correct or not, and how deep it goes—only then can one "rely on the dharma, not on the person." If one does not understand the words, how can one rely on the dharma? One can only rely on the person. When relying on the person, one will say that so-and-so is such-and-such a great master, that such-and-such a great master cannot be wrong. People in this world are all like this: they only recognize fame, only recognize already-established influence, and have no wisdom to judge the person's actual level of wisdom.

If we wish to rely on the dharma and not on the person, we must realize the dharma and possess great wisdom before we can rely on the dharma; at the very least we must understand the dharma before we can rely on it. If we do not understand the dharma, we simply cannot rely on it. To truly be able to rely on the dharma is indeed extremely difficult. How many people today loudly proclaim "rely on the dharma, not on the person," yet nearly ninety-nine percent of them are relying on the person and cannot rely on the dharma. They all say, "So-and-so is a great master; a great master is certainly right; one cannot say the master is wrong; what the master teaches must be accepted in full." In reality, the master's teachings may contain many errors—perhaps extremely many and extremely grave—but who has the wisdom to discern them? Moreover, how many people are shouting "do not discriminate"? This is the pitiable state of wisdomless sentient beings in the Dharma-ending age.

The Buddha's physical body is liberated form (mokṣa-rūpa): although liberated, a physical body still exists, and with this physical body He benefits and brings joy to sentient beings without end; although a physical body exists, He is liberated. The arhats, however, although liberated, have no physical body—they have reduced the body to ashes and extinguished wisdom, because their minds of compassion are meager. Although the arhats are liberated, they have only ended segmented birth-and-death (pariccheda-maraṇa); transformational birth-and-death (parināma-maraṇa) has not yet ended, they still have ignorance, countless obstructions of the knowable (jñeya-āvaraṇa) not yet severed, and latent tendencies (anuśaya) and habituated afflictions not yet eliminated. Therefore the arhats' liberation is not thorough and not ultimate.