The Buddhist View of Dependent Origination Differs from That of Non-Buddhist Paths.

Question: All dharmas arise from the combination of causes and conditions — doesn't this contradict the statement in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra: “本非因缘，非自然性。”? If there is no contradiction, what does each of these two statements express?

Answer: The cause of all dharmas is the tathāgatagarbha, and the conditions are all the factors that give rise to a particular dharma. The World-Honored One said: 有因有缘，世间集，有因有缘世间灭。The view of causes and conditions held by the non-Buddhists does not refer to the tathāgatagarbha as the cause; their two words "causes and conditions" together both refer to conditions. Therefore, in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra the Buddha denied that all dharmas are produced by causes and conditions, and instead said that they are all of the nature of the tathāgatagarbha. The direct generator of all dharmas is the tathāgatagarbha; all dharmas come from the tathāgatagarbha — they are all dharmas directly produced by the seeds of the four great elements or the seeds of the seven great elements that the tathāgatagarbha transmits.

Take the dharma of the twelve links of dependent origination, which consists of twelve links in a chain: in reality, it is not that the preceding dharma gives birth to the following dharma; rather, all dharmas are given birth by the tathāgatagarbha, and no other dharma can give birth to all dharmas. Therefore, if one expounds the dharma of the twelve links of dependent origination apart from the tathāgatagarbha, that is the teaching of non-Buddhists. The pratyekabuddhas did not realize the dharma of the twelve links of dependent origination apart from the tathāgatagarbha; when they traced the dharma of dependent origination backward, they deduced that the tathāgatagarbha is the source of life.

In the third volume of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the World-Honored One taught that all dharmas are “本非因缘，非自然性”，meaning that all the myriad dharmas of the world are not produced by various conditions, nor do they exist naturally on their own; rather, they arise from within the tathāgatagarbha, are inherently of the nature of the tathāgatagarbha, and are all generated by the functioning of the tathāgatagarbha. Thus, on all the myriad dharmas one can see one's own buddha-nature, that is, the nature of the tathāgatagarbha. The tathāgatagarbha is a tight and vast net that nets all the myriad dharmas within it; all dharmas are entirely His subjects. In the statement “本非因缘，非自然性。”，the words 本如来藏性 were omitted afterward, and therefore it is very difficult for many sentient beings to understand the true meaning of this statement.