The True Meaning of Dependent Origination and Emptiness

Dependent origination and emptiness of self-nature means that all dharmas take the tathāgatagarbha as their cause and the karmic seeds of ignorance as their conditions; when causes and conditions come together, the tathāgatagarbha brings forth all dharmas.

All dharmas include the dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms of the threefold world, that is, the world of sentient beings. Specifically, they include: the five aggregates: the aggregate of form, the aggregate of feeling, the aggregate of perception, the aggregate of volitional formations, and the aggregate of consciousness; the six faculties: the eye faculty, ear faculty, nose faculty, tongue faculty, body faculty, and manas; the six sense objects: form objects, sound objects, smell objects, taste objects, touch objects, and mental objects (dharmas); the six consciousnesses: eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness. The entire world in which sentient beings live is included within these. All these dharmas are produced by the tathāgatagarbha relying on various karmic conditions; when the conditions are exhausted, they cease. They have no real existence; they are illusorily manifested by the tathāgatagarbha, empty and illusory, and their essence is all the nature of the tathāgatagarbha.

Therefore, the world of the five aggregates and eighteen realms of sentient beings is not real; it is empty, subject to arising and ceasing, suffering, and not-self. When sentient beings understand this principle, they will no longer crave and cling to the dharmas of their own five aggregates and eighteen realms, and they can eradicate the suffering of birth-and-death saṃsāra, and will no longer be bound within the ocean of saṃsāra and karma.

The twelve links of dependent origination: ignorance conditions volitional formations (avidyā-pratyayāḥ saṃskārāḥ), volitional formations condition consciousness, consciousness conditions name-and-form, name-and-form condition the six sense bases (ṣaḍāyatana), the six sense bases condition contact, contact conditions feeling, feeling conditions craving, craving conditions grasping (upādāna), grasping conditions existence, existence conditions birth, and birth conditions aging, death, sorrow, grief, suffering, and distress (śoka-parideva-duḥkha-daurmanasyopāyāsa). This is a chain of birth and death; when ignorance is completely destroyed, the chain of birth and death is severed, and there will be no more suffering of birth and death to be experienced.