The True Meaning of Dependent Origination and Emptiness

Dependent origination and inherent emptiness means that all dharmas arise from the Tathagatagarbha as the cause, with ignorance and karmic seeds as the conditions. When causes and conditions converge, the Tathagatagarbha brings forth all dharmas.

All dharmas encompass the five aggregates and eighteen elements of the three realms, which constitute the world of sentient beings. Specifically, they include: the five aggregates: form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness; the six sense faculties: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind; the six sense objects: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects, and mental objects; the six consciousnesses: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, and mind-consciousness. The entire world in which sentient beings exist is encompassed within these. All these dharmas are produced by the Tathagatagarbha relying on various karmic conditions. They cease when the conditions are exhausted, lacking true reality, being illusory manifestations of the Tathagatagarbha, empty and unreal in nature, yet their essence is the Tathagatagarbha nature.

Therefore, the five aggregates and eighteen elements of sentient beings are not real, but empty, subject to birth and cessation, characterized by suffering, and devoid of self. When sentient beings understand this truth, they cease clinging to the dharmas of their own five aggregates and eighteen elements, thereby severing the suffering of birth-and-death cycles, and are no longer bound within the sea of suffering that is samsara.

The twelve links of dependent origination: Ignorance conditions volitional formations; volitional formations condition consciousness; consciousness conditions name-and-form; name-and-form conditions the six sense bases; the six sense bases condition contact; contact conditions feeling; feeling conditions craving; craving conditions clinging; clinging conditions becoming; becoming conditions birth; birth conditions aging, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. This is a chain of birth and death. When ignorance is completely eradicated, the chain of birth and death is broken, and the suffering of birth and death ceases.