When the Mind Has Left Home, the Body Can All the More Leave Home

When the Buddha's Dharma is about to perish, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra and the Prautyutpanna-samādhi Sūtra will first vanish and disappear; the twelve divisions of the scriptures will soon after perish as well, never to appear again, their texts no longer to be seen. The robes (kāṣāya) of the śramaṇas will turn white of themselves.

A śramaṇa is a monastic who wears black robes, while those who wear white clothing are laypeople. The robes turning white signifies that all monastics have returned to secular life and gone home, or that no one has gone forth anymore. The result is that the Buddha's Dharma has perished. This shows that from beginning to end, the Buddha's Dharma has been carried and transmitted by monastics; if there are no monastics, no one will transmit it, and the Buddha's Dharma will surely perish.

Therefore, as disciples of the Buddha, we have a duty to protect and uphold the treasury of Dharma left behind by the Buddha. The best way to protect it is to go forth from home and cultivate the Path, spreading the Buddha's Dharma with the body of a monastic, so that the Buddha's Dharma may flourish. Since some have already gone forth in mind, there is no reason why they should not go forth in body. Because the body has no autonomy of its own and is entirely governed by the mind, obeying the mind's commands, once the mind has gone forth, there is no obstacle to the body going forth. The mind need only make a decision and give a command, and the body will unconditionally obey.

Therefore, one who has gone forth in mind should have no more entanglements in the world—no craving for the pleasures of the five worldly desires, no craving for worldly wealth, sensual pleasures, fame, food, and sleep, no craving for worldly forms, sounds, scents, tastes, and tangibles. As for worldly duties, they are far less important than the duties owed to the Three Jewels of Buddhism. In the past, there were kings, emperors, ministers, and officials who bore the weight of the rise and fall of entire nations, entrusted with the hopes of all their people, and who had crowds of wives and concubines and many children and family members—yet they still went forth to cultivate the Path without hesitation. In the Buddha's time, because wives and children had no status or autonomy and were subordinate to husbands and fathers, their livelihood depended entirely upon them, men who wished to follow the Buddha and go forth had no choice but to entrust their wives and children to others, lest they be left with no one to care for them and no means of living. They went forth to cultivate the Path, first, in pursuit of purity, and second, for the sake of Buddhism as a whole. It was because so many people of great merit went forth to protect and uphold it that Buddhism flourished and has been passed down from generation to generation to this day.

Then we, the Buddha's disciples in this age of the Dharma's decline—since we have already gone forth in mind, what reason is there that we cannot go forth in body? If only the mind consciousness has gone forth, it cannot guarantee or bring about the body's going forth; only if the manas has gone forth can it guarantee and determine that the body will also go forth. If only the mind consciousness has realized the fruits and awakened to the true mind and seen its nature, while the manas has not realized the fruits nor awakened to the true mind and seen its nature, then one cannot let go of worldly benefits and is unwilling to leave the secular world and have the body go forth as well.