When the mind has left home, the body can more fully leave home.

When the Buddhist Dharma is on the verge of complete extinction, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra and the Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra will be the first to vanish, and then the twelve divisions of the scriptures will soon perish as well, never appearing again, with no written texts to be seen. The robes (kāṣāya) of the śramaṇas will naturally turn white.

A śramaṇa is a monastic who wears black robes, while those who wear white clothes are laypeople. The robes turning white signifies that all monastics have returned to lay life and gone home, or that no one is leaving home to become a monastic anymore. The result is that the Buddhist Dharma becomes extinct. This shows that from the very beginning to the very end, the Buddhist Dharma has been carried and transmitted by monastics; if there are no monastics, no one will transmit it, and the Buddhist Dharma will surely perish.

Therefore, as Buddhist disciples, we have an obligation to protect and uphold the treasury of the Buddhist Dharma left behind by the Buddha. The best way to protect it is to leave home and cultivate the Path, spreading the Buddhist Dharma as a monastic, so that the Buddhist Dharma may flourish. Since some people have already left home in mind, there is no reason why they should not leave home in body. Because the body has no autonomy of its own and is entirely governed by the mind, obeying the mind's commands, as long as the mind has left home, there is no obstacle to the body leaving home. Once the mind makes a decision and gives a command, the body will unconditionally obey.

Therefore, those who have left home in mind should have no more attachments in the world—no craving for the pleasures of the five worldly desires, no craving for worldly wealth, sensual pleasures, fame, food, and sleep, no craving for worldly forms, sounds, scents, tastes, and tactile objects. As for worldly responsibilities, they are far less important than the responsibilities toward the Three Jewels of Buddhism. In the past, there were kings, emperors, and ministers who bore the heavy responsibility for the rise and fall of entire nations, shouldering the trust of all the people of their countries, and who had many consorts and numerous children and family members—yet they still left home to cultivate the Path without hesitation. Moreover, in the Buddha's time, wives and children had no status and no autonomy; they were subordinate to their husbands and fathers and depended entirely on them for their livelihood. In order to follow the Buddha and leave home, men had to give their wives and children to others, lest they have no one to care for them and no means of living. They left home to cultivate the Path, first, in pursuit of purity, and second, for the sake of Buddhism as a whole. It was because so many people of great merit left home to protect and uphold it that Buddhism was able to flourish and be passed down from generation to generation to this day.

Then, as Buddhist disciples in this age of the Dharma's decline, since we have already left home in mind, what reason is there that we cannot leave home in body? If only the conscious mind has left home, it cannot guarantee or bring about leaving home in body; only if the manas has left home can it be guaranteed and decided that the body will also leave home. Thus, if only the consciousness has realized the fruits and attained enlightenment—seeing the mind and seeing its nature—while the manas has not realized the fruits or attained enlightenment, one cannot let go of worldly benefits and is unwilling to leave the secular world so that the body may also leave home at the same time.