Why Are All Dharmas Empty Marks?

Original text of the Heart Sutra: 舍利子。色不异空。空不异色。色即是空。空即是色。受想行识。亦复如是。舍利子。是诸法空相。不生不灭。不垢不净。不增不减。是故空中无色。无受想行识。无眼耳鼻舌身意。无色声香味触法。无眼界。乃至无意识界。无无明。亦无无明尽。乃至无老死。亦无老死尽。无苦集灭道。无智亦无得。

Explanation: Why does the Heart Sutra contain all these "no's" (negations)? How can they be understood through Yogācāra? If this passage is explained using the principle of the seeds of the seven great elements in Yogācāra, it becomes easy to understand. The dharmas of the five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness—are generated from the seeds of the seven great elements within the tathāgatagarbha. From the perspective of worldly dharma-marks, it seems that the five aggregates and their functions exist; but in essence, they are all the seeds of the seven great elements of the tathāgatagarbha and their operations, and therefore all are the functions of the tathāgatagarbha. Thus the worldly appearances of the five aggregates are in fact all false appearances, all empty, and in reality do not exist. Therefore, although the aggregate of form appears, on the surface, to have worldly phenomena of arising and ceasing, at its root the arising of the aggregate of form is the transformation of the seeds of the seven great elements, and the ceasing of the aggregate of form is likewise the transformation of the seeds of the seven great elements. From beginning to end it is all the functioning of the seeds of the seven great elements; there is no real aggregate of form to speak of. By the same token, the four aggregates of feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness are also like this—they are all the ceaseless transformations of the seeds of the seven great elements; the four aggregates of feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness have nothing to do with it at all.

Moreover, the functions of the seeds of the seven great elements are precisely the functions of the tathāgatagarbha. The tathāgatagarbha uses the seeds of the seven great elements as raw material, splashing ink freely to transform and manifest the manifold world of the five aggregates. But no matter what, the marks of the world are all empty; the dharmas of the five aggregates have never arisen and never ceased. Nor can one speak of the five aggregates as defiled or pure, because the raw material is the pure seeds of the seven great elements, and the marks of the dharmas of the five aggregates are empty. Since they are empty, whatever one says is conceptual proliferation (prapañca). Thus the emptiness-mark of the dharmas of the five aggregates is also neither increasing nor decreasing—never having arisen, never having ceased, never having changed. And this supramundane dharma-mark of the tathāgatagarbha is also an emptiness-mark; He does not possess any appearance found in the world, and therefore He too is neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiled nor pure (na saṃkleśo na vyavadānam), neither increasing nor decreasing.

Therefore it is said that within this emptiness-natured mind, this emptiness-marked mind of the tathāgatagarbha, there are no dharmas at all: no aggregate of form, no aggregates of feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness, no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind, no form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or dharmas, no eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, or mind consciousness, no ignorance. Nor is there any cessation of ignorance, no suffering, origination, cessation, or path, no twelve links of dependent origination, and even no wisdom and no attainment—yet all worldly dharmas, in the final analysis, are the dharma of the tathāgatagarbha, all attributes of the tathāgatagarbha.

To see marks is already a mistake; to see marks is the mind grasping at itself with its own mind, causing the tathāgatagarbha, which is not illusory, to become an illusory dharma. "If one sees that all marks are no-marks, one then sees the Tathāgata"—if one sees that the five aggregates are not the marks of the five aggregates, that there are no marks of the five aggregates, then one has seen the Tathāgata Buddha—the tathāgatagarbha. Merely seeing that marks are false and illusory is still not a sufficient level; from the perspective of Yogācāra dharma, illusory dharmas are simply empty—there are no such things as illusory dharmas. But from the perspective of the one true dharma-realm, when the one is true, all is true; there is no falsity—illusory dharmas are true dharmas. The illusory marks are in fact the true dharma, the tathāgatagarbha; they are dharmas within the one true dharma-realm, all possessing the tathāgatagarbha nature. Only seeing dharmas in this way is ultimate. Having studied Yogācāra and applied Yogācāra, one will come to feel that everything learned previously was not ultimate, and that Yogācāra is the most ultimate Buddhadharma.