Clinging to the Conventional Truth, One Does Not See the Ultimate Truth — Without the Path

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

These four lines all embody that special, formless and signless Way, and what they reveal is the operation of the tathāgatagarbha. Yet those not yet awakened let their minds plunge entirely into the scene, pondering its artistic mood—seeing people, seeing scenes, seeing affairs, feelings stirred by whatever they encounter, filled with myriad sighs. In fact, pondering the scene is a great error, for there is really no scene to be pondered. This poem expresses no scene at all—no person, no scene, no affair; it is entirely one single word: the Way. Let me ask: where is the Way? It is in all the affairs where people and scenes meet, and it is also in people and in scenes—present everywhere. But ordinary beings do not see the Way; they see only worldly marks. Gold dust fills the sky; once it falls into the eye, it becomes a cataract. Gold dust is not seen with the eyes—whatever is seen is all sand and dirt; yet when experienced with the mind, it is all gold.

Someone says: "Is not what you are saying a case of wrongly grasping emptiness?" This is not wrongly grasping emptiness. Wrongly grasping emptiness means refusing to acknowledge even the Way that is the tathāgatagarbha, emptying all dharmas completely so that nothing exists at all—not even cause and effect, no cause, no effect, no precepts, with no scruples whatsoever in any bodily, verbal, or mental actions. What these four lines display, however, is no person, no scene, no affair—precisely that non-empty Way, the tathāgatagarbha; whereas grasping at person, scene, and affair is precisely grasping at emptiness. Because ordinary beings have not yet realized the Way, no view they hold can be correct. While grasping at person, scene, and affair, how could they ever see the tathāgatagarbha and realize the tathāgatagarbha?

Moreover, emptiness is what the teachings of the greater and lesser vehicles point toward: the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness—the person—is empty; the inner and outer six sense-objects and scenes are empty; with no person and no scene, there is no affair. Only by emptying these illusory dharmas can one see that non-empty tathāgatagarbha. Having grasped at dharmas that are empty, the wisdom eye is obscured—how could one then see the non-empty tathāgatagarbha?