The Difference in the Emptiness Realized by the Greater and Lesser Vehicles

The emptiness of the five aggregates realized by the Small Vehicle and that realized by the Great Vehicle are essentially different. Precisely because of this difference, the minds, vows, and conduct of Small Vehicle and Great Vehicle practitioners differ: after attaining liberation, Small Vehicle practitioners enter nirvāṇa without remainder, whereas Great Vehicle practitioners, after attaining liberation, never enter nirvāṇa without remainder. The emptiness of the five aggregates realized by Small Vehicle practitioners is realized at the level of outward appearances—it is an emptiness attained by observing the arising, abiding, altering, and ceasing of the phenomena of the five aggregates. Such emptiness is not ultimate, does not reach the very bottom, and is still partial; therefore their wisdom is shallow, and their conduct and vows are shallow as well. The emptiness of the five aggregates realized by Great Vehicle practitioners is realized from the essence of the five aggregates. Having seen that the essence of the five aggregates is produced by the tathāgatagarbha, they no longer concern themselves with the five aggregates, nor do they seek ways to extinguish them; hence their conduct and vows are great. 

For example, some people, seeing a person born and then die, will know that a person is impermanent, perishable, and beyond grasp, and therefore empty. But other people go further: they see that this person is actually conjured up by a magician, with birth and death controlled by the magician—even after death, the magician can conjure him up again, and both birth and death are false appearances. Such people no longer have grasping (upādāna) toward this illusory person, yet they also do not deliberately avoid or abandon him. In fact, the emptiness that Small Vehicle practitioners conceive of is an emptiness opposed to existence—this is still another kind of existence. Precisely because the Small Vehicle practitioners' emptiness remains at the level of surface phenomena and is not an emptiness of essence, they try to extinguish and discard it, try to avoid it, and fear the world of the five aggregates—this is itself another kind of existence. If one were truly empty, what would there be to avoid? What to fear? There would be no attempt to extinguish it. For example, when celestial maidens scatter flowers, Small Vehicle practitioners fear the flowers touching their bodies, so they dodge the flowers and shake off those on their bodies, believing that flowers touching the body is contrary to the Dharma. Great Vehicle practitioners pay no attention to these flowers; even covered in flowers from head to toe, they do not care—and so the flowers do not stick to their bodies. 

Why do Great Vehicle bodhisattvas have such an attitude? Because bodhisattvas know that the flowers are illusory false appearances with no substantial effect, and the material body is the same. An illusory body and illusory flowers—what obstruction could there be? What could be contrary to the Dharma? All these dharmas must be personally realized and experienced through one's own realization; without such realization, even if one understands them very well, one has not yet fully arrived. Small Vehicle practitioners believe there truly is an emptiness; Great Vehicle practitioners believe that even emptiness is empty, and emptiness-emptiness is also empty—only when emptiness is exhausted is one truly home.