Dependent Origination and Emptiness Are Not the Core and Focus of the Dharma

The twelve links of dependent origination taught by the World-Honored One in the Āgama sūtras, the canonical texts on the cultivation and realization of the Small Vehicle's path of liberation, are the dharma cultivated by śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas; they do not involve the practice of the Mahāyāna dharma of tathāgatagarbha, and are not the direct dharma for attaining buddhahood; therefore they cannot be regarded as the ultimate dharma. Buddhist practitioners should not think that the Buddha-dharma merely teaches that all dharmas are empty. Within all these empty dharmas, there still exists a dharma that is not empty, namely the unborn and unceasing true mind, the tathāgatagarbha. Without the tathāgatagarbha, the myriad dharmas could not arise through dependent origination at all. When śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas complete the cultivation of the dharma of the twelve links of dependent origination, they will realize the emptiness of dependent origination, knowing that all dharmas of the five-aggregate world arise from causes and conditions—relying on the tathāgatagarbha as the cause, together with conditions such as the karmic seeds of ignorance, all dharmas arise.

Since the myriad dharmas depend on various conditions and are produced by the tathāgatagarbha, they are therefore not real; they are empty, illusory false appearances. On this basis, practitioners of the Two Vehicles can attain liberation and escape the suffering of birth-and-death and saṃsāra. However, they have not yet cultivated and realized the Mahāyāna dharma and do not understand the tathāgatagarbha dharma for attaining buddhahood; having cultivated and realized only the Two Vehicles among the three vehicles of Buddha-dharma, and not yet understanding the supreme vehicle, they nevertheless depart from the three realms. They still have the beginningless ignorance and the ignorance as numerous as dust and sand, which they have neither broken through nor exhausted; the habitual tendencies of ignorance and the latent dispositions of afflictions have not been severed. Therefore they are still very far from the Buddha.

Thus what the Buddha realized at the time of his attainment of the Way could not possibly have been the Two Vehicle dharma of the emptiness of dependent origination; it must have been the supreme vehicle dharma of the tathāgatagarbha. When the Buddha gazed upon the morning star at night, he saw the Buddha-nature with his eyes—he saw the true Buddha-nature, which is the seeing of the nature at the buddha-stage; then the great mirror-like wisdom (ādarśa-jñāna) manifested, and with the four wisdoms perfectly clear, he was able to attain buddhahood. It was not the shallow Two Vehicle dharma of the emptiness of dependent origination as mistakenly understood by worldly people—the essence is vastly different.

If the Buddha had only realized the Two Vehicle dharma of the emptiness of dependent origination, he could not have taught sentient beings the true Mahāyāna tathāgatagarbha dharma for attaining buddhahood; then the Buddha-dharma would be incomplete and would have an enormous deficiency, and sentient beings could not obtain the true, greatest, and ultimate benefit. Nowadays sentient beings misunderstand the Buddha-dharma too severely, and their views are too shallow: they all take the emptiness of dependent origination as the center and focal point of the Buddha-dharma, unable to connect it with the source of the myriad dharmas, not knowing the origin of the myriad dharmas, not knowing the source of the world—this is precisely the defect and abuse of the Buddha-dharma today.