The True Meaning of Dependent Origination and Emptiness of Nature

Dependent arising and emptiness by nature means that all dharmas take tathāgatagarbha as the cause and ignorance and karmic seeds as the conditions; when cause and conditions come together, tathāgatagarbha brings forth all dharmas.

All dharmas include the dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms of the threefold world, that is, the world of sentient beings. Specifically, these include: the five aggregates (pañcaskandha): the aggregate of form (rūpa), the aggregate of feeling (vedanā), the aggregate of perception (saṃjñā), the aggregate of formations (saṃskāra), and the aggregate of consciousness (vijñāna); the six sense faculties: the eye faculty, ear faculty, nose faculty, tongue faculty, body faculty, and manas; the six sense objects: material form, sound, scent, taste, tangibility, and mental objects; the six consciousnesses: eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, and mind consciousness. The entire world in which sentient beings live is included within these. All these dharmas are produced by tathāgatagarbha relying on various karmic conditions; when the conditions are exhausted, they cease. They lack true reality; they are illusory manifestations of tathāgatagarbha, empty and unreal, and in essence they are all the nature of tathāgatagarbha.

Therefore, the world of the five aggregates and eighteen realms of sentient beings is not real; it is empty, subject to arising and ceasing, suffering, and not-self. When sentient beings understand this principle, they no longer crave the worldly dharmas of their own five aggregates and eighteen realms, and they can eliminate the suffering of birth-and-death saṃsāra, no longer being bound within the ocean of suffering of birth and death.

The twelve links of dependent origination: ignorance conditions volitional formations (avidyā-pratyayāḥ saṃskārāḥ), formations condition consciousness, consciousness conditions name-and-form, name-and-form condition the six sense bases (ṣaḍāyatana), the six sense bases condition contact, contact conditions feeling, feeling conditions craving, craving conditions grasping (upādāna), grasping conditions existence, existence conditions birth, and birth conditions aging, death, sorrow, grief, suffering, and distress (śoka-parideva-duḥkha-daurmanasyopāyāsa). This is a chain of birth and death; when ignorance is completely broken through, the chain of birth and death is severed, and there is no longer any suffering of birth and death to be felt.