གླང་པའ་རྩལ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད 19

19

No matter how much one applies one’s mind, practices, understands, acts, or speculates, all this is nonexistent. Therefore, Śāriputra, those who are in this way completely free from such incorrect reifications understand. According to this discourse, Śāriputra, those who have perfected non-conception will quickly accept that all phenomena do not arise.”

When this exposition of the teaching was being presented, forty-two thousand bodhisattvas accepted that all phenomena do not arise. Six thousand male lay vow holders set their minds on unsurpassable, complete, and perfect awakening. Thirty-six thousand sons of the gods gained the realization of wisdom. As for the sixty exceedingly proud monks, their minds became liberated from defilements with no further appropriation.

With minds free from defilements, these sixty arrogant monks spoke the following words in unison: “Blessed One, from this day forth, we shall become renunciants who follow the six teachers. From this day forth, our teacher is no longer the Buddha and we shall rely neither on the Dharma nor on the Saṅgha. From this day forth, we shall be proponents of the nonexistence of action, causation, karma, karmic ripening, and moral conduct.”

At that moment, several thousand beings in the assembly thought to themselves, “These monks have thus become proponents of such untruths! Will they now give up the precepts they received from the Blessed One and take up the traits of the non-Buddhists?”

The venerable Śāriputra clairvoyantly understood what those beings in the retinue were thinking. Therefore, he asked the monks, “Venerable ones, what was your intention when you said, ‘From this day forth, we shall become renunciants who follow the six teachers’?”

“Venerable Śāriputra,” answered the monks, “from this day forth, we perceive all our teachers as identical to the six teachers, as being of a single character, without any difference.