大乘起信論裂網疏 2.24

2.24

Tathatā is free from the marks of verbal expression, yet it is established in reliance on verbal expression with a view to the aspect of arising and ceasing below. By force, with respect to the essence devoid of name and mark, these provisional names are borrowed to explain it, enabling people to see the real moon of the essence by means of the finger of provisional names. Yet tathatā is not even one; how could there be two distinctions? It is merely because the imagined is originally non-existent and the other-dependent is like an illusion that it is called genuinely empty; and because the consummate is originally replete, it is again called genuinely non-empty. Only by emptying the imagined and the other-dependent is the consummate non-empty revealed. For example, only by understanding that the snake is non-existent and realizing that the rope is not real is the non-emptiness of the hemp's substance revealed. Only by seeing that the consummate is non-empty does one believe that the imagined and the other-dependent are non-existent. For example, upon seeing the four subtle atoms of the hemp, one knows that the snake is certainly originally non-existent and the rope is also not real. It is just this momentary mind-nature present before sentient beings: it originally has no real self and no real dharmas, nor any differentiated illusory marks such as the five categories of one hundred dharmas or the hundred realms and thousand suchnesses; hence it says "ultimately free from unreal marks". By this, it reveals that the mind-nature is entirely real in its delusion, the true and permanent uniquely laid bare; hence it says "reveals the real essence". Since the real essence is revealed, one knows that this mind's original nature is inherently replete with boundless virtues—the so-called three thousand inherently present in principle and the three thousand manifested in phenomena. Because all marks of virtue and all functions of activity are identical with the essence of tathatā and without differentiation, every dust mote is the Flower Treasury and every thought is Vairocana, mutually pervasive and mutually interfused, yet without fixed location. For emptiness and non-emptiness are exclusively the essence of the tathatā of the one mind. This essence of tathatā is precisely the essence of the Mahāyāna.