Being Deluded about Emptiness Is Still Wild Fox Zen

Question: For sentient beings at the stage of ceasing evil and cultivating goodness, can they directly engage in contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) that all evil dharmas are the nature of tathāgatagarbha, and that their essence is all tathāgatagarbha? Some people advocate that those who have violated the precepts can use the formless repentance method to eradicate their karmic offenses, and that after enlightenment their precept conduct will become pure. Is it appropriate to do this?

Answer: Practice is arranged according to an individual's faculties and specific circumstances; everyone should cultivate progressively in stages and must not skip ahead or leap over steps. Otherwise, it is easy to fall into the deluded phenomenon of wrongly grasping emptiness, and then to reenact "wild fox Chan," resulting in even heavier karmic obstructions, causing one's practice to advance openly but regress secretly.

For sentient beings at the stage of ceasing evil and cultivating goodness, if they directly contemplate that evil dharmas are the nature of tathāgatagarbha, two different results may occur. One result is that they understand tathāgatagarbha is empty and evil dharmas are also empty, and therefore feel there is no need to create any more evil dharmas, so their mind gradually becomes purified—this is the result of contemplative practice for sentient beings of great spiritual faculties (indriya). The other result is that they do not care about creating evil karma, do not restrain their own minds, and indulge in unrestrained behavior, because they feel that evil dharmas are also dharmas of tathāgatagarbha, that there is no need to be attached to evil dharmas, that one may create evil at will—since everything is anyway the emptiness (śūnyatā) of tathāgatagarbha, there is no real evil dharma, and by taking refuge in tathāgatagarbha there would be no evil dharmas or evil retribution. This is the wrong view (mithyā-dṛṣṭi) and misunderstanding of foolish people of inferior faculties, and the retribution will be unwholesome.

Many people consider themselves to be persons of great spiritual faculties, but in fact, in the Sahā world at present, persons of great spiritual faculties are extremely, extremely rare; their afflictions and karmic obstructions are by no means light. Therefore in practice, when one should cease evil, one ceases evil; when one should cultivate goodness, one cultivates goodness. Do not skip over this stage and neglect the transformation of one's wholesome and unwholesome mental nature, immersing oneself single-mindedly in the principle while remaining confused and inverted in actual conduct. If one treats both wholesome and unwholesome dharmas as that kind of emptiness of tathāgatagarbha, neither ceasing evil nor cultivating goodness, then evil karma obstructs, wholesome dharmas give no support, and merit is incomplete—how could one perfect precepts, meditation (samādhi), and wisdom so as to see the Path? If emptiness hangs on one's lips, can the mind truly become empty? Not at all. If the mind is not empty, the retribution remains as before, and liberation is still not attained.

By the same reasoning, when a person who has violated the precepts uses the formless repentance to repent of offenses, hoping thereby to eradicate karmic offenses, I fear that ordinary people cannot see ultimate reality and cannot eradicate offenses and dissolve karma; and without seeing ultimate reality, how could karmic offenses be dissolved? Then what kind of person can use the repentance of ultimate reality to repent of offenses? It should be someone not far from seeing the Path, one whose cultivation of the thirty-seven factors of the Path and the six pāramitās is approaching perfection, whose mental nature inclines toward goodness, and whose karmic obstructions have become light. When such conditions ripen, with the blessing of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, through the repentance of ultimate reality one can then see ultimate reality, and thereby eradicate offenses and dissolve karma.

After some people study the Mahāyāna dharma, they easily find excuses for their evil conduct, saying that even if these bad deeds are done, they were not truly done—it does not matter, it is all empty. Thus they feel at ease, without a sense of shame, not changing their evil minds and not manifesting wholesome minds. Being deluded in this way about emptiness (śūnyatā), they are still practicing "wild fox Chan" and cannot escape the judgment of cause and effect.