The Essence and Origins of the World

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Dharma Prince Vaḍḍhirapāṇi said: Immeasurable kalpas ago, innumerable Buddhas named "Sound" appeared in the world and expounded to the bodhisattvas that the fundamental enlightenment of Buddhas and sentient beings is profoundly subtle and exquisitely luminous. From this wondrously luminous fundamental enlightened true mind, the world and sentient beings arise. Both the world and the bodies of sentient beings are transformed through illusory causes and conditions like wind power.

After hearing the Buddha's exposition, I observed how the eighteen dhātus are established, how the eighteen dhātus flow and transform across lifetimes to form time, how the five aggregates of sentient beings' bodies operate from emptiness to existence, and how the minds of sentient beings give rise to thoughts. After this observation, I discovered that whether it is the movement of the dhātus or the flux of lifetimes, whether it is the movement of the body or the movement of the mind, all these movements are without duality—equal and undifferentiated. Observing this, I suddenly realized that the nature of movement in all dharmas comes from nowhere and goes nowhere, and that all sentient beings throughout the ten directions, as numerous as motes of dust, are equally illusory. All sentient beings within a single world in the trichiliocosm are like a hundred mosquitoes buzzing chaotically inside a vessel, agitated and clamoring wildly within their own minds like the beating of a drum.

The above text explains what the world is and how it arises. First, it introduces the concept of "dhātu" (界). Dhātu refers to the distinctions and categories of dharmas. All dharmas in the world are divided into eighteen categories based on their differences, known as the eighteen dhātus. These are the six sense faculties, six sense objects, and six consciousnesses—encompassing both the internal and external aspects of sentient beings, within which all dharmas are included. The continuous cycle of birth and death of sentient beings' internal and external aspects forms past, present, and future lifetimes, thus constituting the world. From this, it is understood that the world is the process of the birth-and-death flux of sentient beings' five aggregates and eighteen dhātus. The five aggregates and eighteen dhātus are the master of the world, and the master's continuous cycle of birth and death is called the world.

The movement of the world and the movement of the five-aggregate body-mind are phenomena arising solely from illusory causes and conditions stirring like wind power. Yet these illusory conditions and wind power themselves arise from the wondrously luminous fundamental enlightenment mind of sentient beings. Therefore, the world of sentient beings is illusory—there is no world, no sentient beings, not even empty space. The world is not any particular thing, sentient beings are not any particular thing; only the fundamental enlightenment remains utterly solitary, seeming to be something, yet in the context of worldly dharmas, it is ultimately nothing at all.