Clinging to Conventional Truth, Not Seeing Ultimate Truth — No Path

With hands I plant green seedlings across the field; lowering my head, I see the sky reflected in the water. Only when the mind-ground is pure is it the Path; stepping backward turns out to be moving forward.

These four lines all embody that special Path which is formless and markless, and they all reveal the functioning of the tathāgatagarbha. As for those who have not yet awakened, their minds plunge entirely into the states of experience, pondering the artistic mood within—seeing people, seeing states, and seeing affairs, stirred by the scenes before them and filled with myriad emotions. In fact, pondering states is a great error; there are actually no states to be pondered. This poem does not express any state of experience—no person, no state, no affair—it is entirely one single word: the Path. Let me ask: where is the Path? It is in all the affairs where people and states connect, and it is also in people and in states—omnipresent. Ordinary beings do not see the Path; they see only mundane appearances. When gold dust fills the sky, it becomes a film over the eyes upon falling into them. Gold dust is not seen with the eyes—whatever is seen is only sand and dirt; yet when experienced with the mind, it is all gold.

Some say: "Isn't what you're saying a case of wrongly grasping emptiness?" This is not wrongly grasping emptiness. Wrongly grasping emptiness means refusing to acknowledge even the existence of the tathāgatagarbha, this Path, emptying out all dharmas so that nothing remains at all—not even cause and effect, with no cause, no effect, and no precepts, so that all bodily, verbal, and mental actions are carried out without any scruples. What these four lines display, however, is no person, no state, no affair—precisely the non-empty Path, the tathāgatagarbha—whereas grasping at person, state, and affair is precisely grasping at emptiness. Because ordinary beings have not yet realized the Path, no view they hold can be correct. While grasping at person, state, and affair, how could one possibly see the tathāgatagarbha or realize the tathāgatagarbha?

Emptiness is what the teachings of both the Great and Lesser Vehicles point toward. When the person of the five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness—is empty, and the inner and outer six sense-object states are empty, with no person and no state, then there are no affairs. Only by emptying these illusory dharmas can one see that non-empty tathāgatagarbha. If one grasps at empty dharmas and covers over the wisdom eye, how could one possibly see the non-empty tathāgatagarbha?