Excerpts on the Correct Meanings of Treatise on the Middle Way, Vol. 1, pp.67-68
Teacher Sun Cheng-Te
The dharmas of the five aggregates are all arising-and-ceasing dharmas produced by the tathāgatagarbha through various causes and conditions. The dharmas of the five aggregates have no self-entity or self-nature; they arise due to the tathāgatagarbha through the gathering of causes and conditions. Also due to the tathāgatagarbha, in accordance with karmic seeds and ripening seeds, they will be disintegrated and cease to exist through the dispersion of causes and conditions. The essential nature of the five aggregates is impermanent emptiness. That which is said about the five aggregates’ dependent arising without an intrinsic nature is precisely their impermanent emptiness. Emptiness implies no-self; no dharma possesses a permanent self-entity, and thus, all dharmas are not signs of reality.
The sign of reality refers to the fact that there must be a dharma that does not possess the arising-and-ceasing nature of selfhood of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements, nor does it have the selfhood-nature of sentient beings. Yet, without a selfhood-nature, it can eternally and indestructibly accompany all dharmas that are stemmed from it and continuously operating. It can also abide alone in the remainderless nirvāṇa, generating no dharmas, and in absolute and perfect quiescence. As such,...............