Excerpts of the Correct Meanings on Treatise of 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, the unchanging and eternally abiding dharma entity within the dharma realm is exactly the state of the sign of reality as taught by the true wisdom of Mahāyāna prajñā doctrine. Therefore, the Mahāyāna doctrine does not regard the impermanent emptiness of the arising-and-ceasing dharmas, such as the five aggregates, and so forth as its essential content. The notion of dependent arising with an empty nature of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements is not the true emptiness of the sign of reality in Mahāyāna doctrine. The impermanent emptiness of aggregates, sense fields, and elements—wherein all phenomena (dharmas) are dependently arising without an intrinsic nature is a phenomenon accomplished through various causes and conditions by the one true reality dharma, the eighth consciousness. The arising of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements cannot take place even slightly apart from the dharma of sign of reality, the true emptiness, let alone the dependent arising with an empty nature of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements. The so-called dependent arising without an intrinsic nature refers to the existence of a permanent dharma that produces the aggregates, sense fields, elements, and other dharmas through various conditions. If there were no principal entity, what dharma could generate the aggregates, sense fields, elements, and so forth by making use of various conditions? Moreover, the dharma of dependent arising with an empty nature of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements perpetually falls to the side of arising and ceasing—impermanence—without even the slightest inherently self-existent dharma-nature. It lacks even the slightest nature of neither coming nor going, neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiling nor purifying, or neither increasing nor decreasing.
Therefore, if one claims that various dharmas can arise depending on conditions, it results in the dharmas refuted by the Treatise on the Middle Way (Madhyamaka-śāstra), such as the notions of self-arising, co-arising, other-arising, or causeless arising. Hence, the dependent arising with an empty nature of the five aggregates dharmas has no inherent nature of the intrinsic pure nirvāṇa and is not the true emptiness associated with the prajñā of the sign of reality as taught by the Buddha.