廬山蓮宗寶鑑 10.16

10.16

Emptiness means demolishing all existing things. The Great Awakened World-Honoured One revealed the correct Dharma wishing to cause all people to recognize that the ten thousand worldly phenomena are all empty, and to awaken themselves to the true emptiness of their original nature. True emptiness is the Tathāgata's dharmadhātu and the original mind of sentient beings; it is empty and yet not empty, existing and yet not existing. Those who awaken to it draw out their own treasure house from non-existence; searching it, it is inexhaustible; using it, it is endless. This is called the wondrous Path of the ekayāna; it is not the emptiness of inert nihilism. Nowadays, there is a class of fools who speak solely of emptiness and wipe out cause and effect; with every step they walk in existence, yet with every breath their mouths speak of nothingness. They promptly declare that drinking wine and eating meat do not obstruct bodhi, and committing theft and sexual misconduct do not hinder prajñā. Acting unrestrained and wild, they run rampant in madness, slandering the Buddha and slandering the sūtras, slighting and reviling everything, babbling and confusing all order to represent the supreme vehicle, mocking the sages and worthies, and claiming to have attained the Path themselves. People like this are everywhere. What Yongjia called 'Sweeping emptiness that wipes out cause and effect / recklessly brings on calamity and disaster'—what else could it refer to but this sort of person? Furthermore, the *Śūraṅgama-sūtra* says: 'If the mind attaches to emptiness, a powerful demon of emptiness will enter his internal organs. The person does not know that he is possessed by a demon; his mouth speaks the scriptural teachings while he secretly pursues greedy desires, slighting and reviling sūtras and images. Deluding and confusing people, they all suffer heterodox downfall. When the demon's mind grows bored, it departs from the person's body, and both master and disciple fall into trouble with the king's law. At the end of life, they themselves become the retinue of the demon's household, and when their demonic karma is exhausted, they fall into the Avīci Hell.' Alas, we are far from the sage, his subtle words have ceased, heterodox doctrines arise, and the great meaning is violated: if one does not attach to existence, one dissipates into emptiness. Attaching to existence, one clings to names and marks, stagnates in the conditioned, hardens the divide between self and others, and gets bogged down in enmity and love; one is bound by the immediate teachings and loses the profound principle. Dissipating into emptiness, one confuses cause and effect, conflates good and evil, abandons the precepts, and betrays propriety and righteousness; this is simply not knowing that the Middle Way is the supreme good. Someone may ask: 'What is called the Middle Way?' The answer: 'Existing and yet not attached, nothingness and yet not empty; emptiness is not separate from existence, existence is not separate from emptiness; enmity and love are equalized, others and self are leveled, cause and effect are clarified, good and evil are distinguished, the precepts are applied, propriety and righteousness are cultivated, the immediate teachings are penetrated, and the profound principle is attained. How great is the Middle Way! Is it the name that makes all things wondrous? Is it that which praises the fundamental nature? If one penetrates this principle, one will not fall into one-sided extremes; this is called attaining the correct concentration of buddhānusmṛti-samādhi.'