The One Real Realm
This page opens the sūtra's second fascicle, and its true center of gravity. Kṣitigarbha turns from the wheel-marks of Parts 1–3 to what he calls the "one real realm" (一實境界): the claim that a single mind-nature, unborn and unceasing, underlies every one of the six kinds of ordinary being and every kind of enlightened one alike — the tathāgatagarbha that makes "sentient being," "bodhisattva," and "buddha" only three names for one thing that never actually changes.
Mind Like Empty Space
爾時，堅淨信菩薩摩訶薩問地藏菩薩摩訶薩言：「云何開示求向大乘者，進趣方便？」地藏菩薩摩訶薩言：「善男子！若有眾生欲向大乘者，應當先知最初所行根本之業。其最初所行根本業者，所謂依止一實境界以修信解，因信解力增長故，速疾得入菩薩種性。所言一實境界者，謂眾生心體，從本以來，不生不滅，自性清淨，無障無礙，猶如虛空。
「離分別故，平等普遍，無所不至，圓滿十方，究竟一相，無二無別，不變不異，無增無減。以一切眾生心，一切聲聞、辟支佛心，一切菩薩心，一切諸佛心，皆同不生不滅，無染寂靜，真如相故。」
Then the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Firm and Pure Faith asked the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Kṣitigarbha: "How should one open and explain the expedient means of progress for those who seek to move toward the Great Vehicle?" The bodhisattva-mahāsattva Kṣitigarbha said: "Good son! If there are sentient beings who wish to move toward the Great Vehicle, they should first know the fundamental deed that must be practiced from the very outset. This fundamental deed practiced from the very outset is to rely upon the one real realm in cultivating faith and understanding — for as the power of that faith and understanding grows, one swiftly comes to enter the lineage of a bodhisattva. What is called the one real realm is this: the very substance of sentient beings' mind, from the very beginning, is unborn and unceasing, self-natured and pure, without obstruction and without hindrance, just like empty space.
"Free of discrimination, it is equal and pervasive, reaching everywhere, perfectly filling the ten directions, ultimately a single mark, without duality, without distinction, unchanging, undiffering, without increase, without decrease. For the minds of all sentient beings, the minds of all śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, the minds of all bodhisattvas, and the minds of all buddhas are alike unborn and unceasing, undefiled and still — all bearing the mark of suchness."
Zhixu's boldest move here is to insist this passage describes what a deluded, ordinary mind already is right now, not a future state a practitioner earns by becoming a buddha: "非待成佛之後，方證不生不滅" ("this is not something realized only after becoming a buddha"). He grounds this in two direct quotations — the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment's "all sentient beings already realize perfect enlightenment," and the Avataṃsaka's "when the Tathāgata achieved true awakening, he saw that all sentient beings had already achieved true awakening" — and draws the consequence plainly: "此是直指人心，見性成佛。若離現前一念，別談真心，何異離波覓水" ("this is pointing directly at the human mind, seeing one's nature and becoming buddha. To speak of a true mind apart from this present single thought — how is that different from leaving the waves to go looking for the water?").
To make the claim that one undivided mind-nature is fully present in every single being concrete, he offers two everyday analogies rather than an abstract argument. Sunlight streaming through a hundred cracks in a wall is not divided into a hundred fragments of sunlight — each crack shows the sun's entire disc, "非是日之少分" ("not a lesser portion of the sun"). And on New Year's Day, when the whole country turns a year older together, no single person receives only a fraction of that year, nor does the day multiply into as many New Year's Days as there are people to celebrate it — everyone gets the whole of it, at once, without division. "夫日光僅是色法，尚爾不可思議，況一心靈妙而不爾耶" ("if even sunlight, a mere physical phenomenon, works this way beyond ordinary reckoning, how much more so the numinous subtlety of a single mind").
Why the Mind You Think You Have Cannot Be Found
「所以者何？一切有心起分別者，猶如幻化，無有定實。所謂識、受、想、行、憶念、緣慮、覺知等，種種心數，非青非黃，非赤非白，亦非雜色，無有長短、方圓、大小。乃至盡於十方虛空一切世界，求心形狀，無一區分而可得者。但以眾生無明癡闇熏習因緣，現妄境界，令生念著。所謂此心不能自知，妄自謂有，起覺知想，計我、我所，而實無有覺知之想。以此妄心畢竟無體，不可見故。
「若無覺知能分別者，則無十方三世一切境界差別之相。以一切法皆不能自有，但依妄心分別故有。所謂一切境界，各各不自念為有，知此為自，知彼為他。是故一切法不能自有，則無別異。唯依妄心，不知不了內自無故，謂有前外境界，妄生種種法想，謂有謂無，謂彼謂此，謂是謂非，謂好謂惡，乃至妄生無量無邊法想。當如是知，一切諸法，皆從妄想生，依妄心為本。」
"Why is this so? Whatever mind arises and gives rise to discrimination is like an illusion or a conjured thing, having no fixed reality. That is to say, consciousness, feeling, perception, mental formations, recollection, deliberation, awareness, and every other kind of mental factor is neither blue nor yellow, neither red nor white, nor any mixed color; it has no length or shortness, no square or round shape, no largeness or smallness. Even searching throughout every world in the empty space of the ten directions for the shape of the mind, not a single distinguishable form can be found. It is only because of the causes and conditions of sentient beings' ignorance and dark delusion habituating them that a false realm appears, causing thought and attachment to arise. That is to say, this mind cannot know itself, and falsely supposes itself to exist, giving rise to the notion of an awareness, reckoning "I" and "mine" — yet in reality there is no such notion of awareness at all, because this false mind is, in the end, without any substance, and cannot be seen.
"If there were no awareness capable of discrimination, then there would be no differentiated marks of any realm at all, across the ten directions and the three times. For no dharma can exist of itself; it exists only because a false mind discriminates it into being. That is to say, no aspect of any realm thinks of itself as existing, knowing this to be itself and that to be other. Therefore no dharma can exist of itself, and so there is no real distinction among them at all. It is only because of a false mind, not knowing and not understanding that there is, within, no self to be found, that one supposes there to be an external realm before one, and falsely gives rise to every kind of notion of things — supposing existence, supposing non-existence, supposing this, supposing that, supposing right, supposing wrong, supposing good, supposing bad, and so on, falsely giving rise to measureless, boundless notions of things. One should understand it thus: all dharmas arise entirely from false thought, and take a false mind as their root."
Zhixu draws an explicit parallel here to the Śūraṅgama Sūtra's famous seven-location search for the mind — Ānanda's repeated failure to locate a mind inside the body, outside it, hidden in the sense-faculties, or anywhere else the Buddha proposes and rejects in turn. This passage, he says, "正欲顯此妄心無體" ("aims at exactly the same thing: showing that the false mind has no substance"). The point of both searches is not that the mind is hidden somewhere clever enough that ordinary looking missed it, but that what is doing the looking — the sense of an "I" that has thoughts and owns them — is itself the very illusion in question, "如波以水為體，別無自體也" ("like a wave, which has water as its substance and no separate substance of its own"). A wave never had to be searched for and found not to exist; there was never anything there but water taking a temporary shape. The mind that seems to think, feel, and remember is, on this reading, exactly that kind of shape — real as an event, but never findable as a separately existing thing behind the event.
A False Mind and a False World, Propping Each Other Up
「然此妄心無自相故，亦依境界而有，所謂緣念覺知前境界故，說名為心。又此妄心與前境界，雖俱相依，起無先後，而此妄心能為一切境界原主。所以者何？謂依妄心，不了法界一相故，說心有無明。依無明力因故，現妄境界。亦依無明滅故，一切境界滅。非依一切境界自不了故，說境界有無明，亦非依境界故，生於無明，以一切諸佛，於一切境界不生無明故。又復不依境界滅故，無明心滅。以一切境界，從本已來，體性自滅，未曾有故。因如此義，是故但說一切諸法依心為本。當知一切諸法，悉名為心，以義、體不異，為心所攝故。又一切諸法，從心所起，與心作相，和合而有，共生共滅，同無有住。以一切境界，但隨心所緣，念念相續故，而得住持，暫時為有。」
"Yet since this false mind has no mark of its own, it too exists only in dependence on a realm — that is to say, it is called mind precisely because it clings to and is aware of a realm before it. And though this false mind and the realm before it are mutually dependent, arising together without one preceding the other, this false mind is nonetheless the original source of every realm. Why is this? Because it is in dependence on the false mind's failure to understand the single mark of the dharma-realm that mind is said to have ignorance. It is in dependence on the causal force of this ignorance that a false realm appears; and it is likewise because ignorance ceases that every realm ceases. It is not that the realm itself, through its own failure to understand, is what is said to possess ignorance; nor does ignorance arise in dependence on the realm — since all buddhas, in the midst of every realm, do not give rise to ignorance. Nor does the mind of ignorance cease in dependence on the cessation of a realm, since every realm, from the very outset, has a nature that ceases of itself, and has in truth never existed at all. For this reason, it is said only that all dharmas take mind as their root. One should know that all dharmas are entirely called mind, since in meaning and in substance they are no different, being wholly contained within mind. Furthermore, all dharmas arise from mind, take on marks together with mind, come to exist through this union, arise together and cease together, and alike have no abiding. It is only because every realm follows what mind clings to, moment after moment in unbroken succession, that it comes to be sustained, existing only for a time."
Zhixu is careful to head off a misreading here. The previous section showed that the realm depends on mind; this passage, taken alone, seems to reverse it and show mind depending on the realm — so is this "mind-only," or its opposite? He resolves it by holding both together rather than letting either stand alone: "前明境界依妄心有...次明妄心依境界有...今故合明，雖俱相依，仍以心為主也" ("the previous section showed the realm exists in dependence on the false mind... this one shows the false mind exists in dependence on the realm... now, taking both together, though they are mutually dependent, mind is still what governs"). In his more technical Yogācāra vocabulary, an object arising from the self-witnessing aspect of mind and a perceiving aspect arising in response to that object come into being in the very same instant, with no priority between them — but both are still folded within what is, at root, one single mind, "但指相分以為境界" ("simply designating the object-aspect as 'the realm'"). Nothing here contradicts the site's separate Awakening of Faith's "one mind, two gates," or the Cheng Weishi Lun's four-part analysis of consciousness — this is the same architecture, applied here to explain exactly how ignorance and its object bootstrap each other into a false but functioning world without either one needing to have come first.
Two Marks of Mind, and Why Neither Is Ever Outside It
「如是所說心義者，有二種相。何等為二？一者心內相，二者心外相。心內相者，復有二種。云何為二？一者真，二者妄。所言真者，謂心體本相，如如不異，清淨圓滿，無障無礙，微密難見，以遍一切處，常恒不壞，建立生長一切法故。所言妄者，謂起念、分別、覺知、緣慮、憶想等事，雖復相續，能生一切種種境界，而內虛偽，無有真實，不可見故。所言心外相者，謂一切諸法種種境界等，隨有所念，境界現前故，知有內心及外心差別。如是當知，內妄想者，為因為體。外妄相者，為果為用。依如此等義，是故我說一切諸法悉名為心。
「又復當知，心外相者，如夢所見種種境界，唯心想作，無實外事。一切境界，悉亦如是，以皆依無明識夢所見，妄想作故。
「復次，應知內心念念不住故，所見、所緣一切境界亦隨心念念不住，所謂心生故種種法生，心滅故種種法滅。而生滅相，但有名字，實不可得。以心不往至於境界，境界亦不來至於心。如鏡中像，無來無去。是故一切法，求生滅定相，了不可得。所謂一切法畢竟無體，本來常空，實不生滅故。如是一切法實不生滅者，則無一切境界差別之相，寂靜一味，名為真如、第一義諦、自性清淨心。彼自性清淨心，湛然圓滿，以無分別相故。無分別相者，於一切處，無所不在。無所不在者，以能依持建立一切法故。」
"As for the meaning of mind spoken of in this way, it has two kinds of mark. What are the two? First, the inner mark of mind; second, the outer mark of mind. The inner mark of mind, in turn, has two kinds. What are the two? First, the true; second, the false. What is called true is the original mark of the very substance of mind, thus and unchanging, pure and perfect, without obstruction and without hindrance, subtle and hidden and hard to see, yet pervading every place, forever constant and indestructible, establishing and giving rise to every dharma. What is called false is the arising of thought, discrimination, awareness, deliberation, recollection, and other such matters — which, though continuous, and capable of giving rise to every kind of realm, are inwardly empty and false, without any reality, and cannot be seen. What is called the outer mark of mind is this: all dharmas and every kind of realm, whenever a thought arises, appear as a realm before one — and from this one knows there is a distinction between an inner mind and an outer mind. One should understand it thus: the inner false thought is the cause, and is the substance; the outer false mark is the fruit, and is the function. In accordance with this meaning, I say that all dharmas are entirely called mind.
"Furthermore, one should know that the outer mark of mind is like the various realms seen in a dream — made only by the mind's own imagining, with no real external thing to it at all. Every realm is just the same, since all are made by false thought, seen only as one sees things in the dream of ignorant consciousness.
"Furthermore, one should know that because the inner mind does not abide from thought-moment to thought-moment, whatever realm is seen and clung to likewise does not abide from moment to moment along with the mind. That is to say, because mind arises, every kind of dharma arises; because mind ceases, every kind of dharma ceases. Yet this mark of arising and ceasing has only a name, and in reality cannot be found at all — for mind does not go out to reach the realm, nor does the realm come to reach the mind, just as with a reflection in a mirror, which neither comes nor goes. Therefore, seeking a fixed mark of arising and ceasing in any dharma, one can never find it in the end. That is to say, all dharmas are, in the end, without any substance, originally and forever empty, in reality neither arising nor ceasing. Since all dharmas in this way do not truly arise or cease, there is no mark of difference among any realm at all — still and of one flavor, this is called suchness, the ultimate truth, the self-natured pure mind. That self-natured pure mind is limpid and perfectly full, because it has no mark of discrimination. Having no mark of discrimination, it is present everywhere, in every place. Being present everywhere, it is able to sustain and establish every dharma."
Zhixu supplies a single concrete image to hold together what would otherwise be four increasingly abstract Yogācāra terms — the mind's self-witnessing aspect, its witness-of-the-witness, its perceiving aspect, and its object-aspect. All four, he says, are like a bronze mirror: the mirror's face and back are the "inner" aspects (self-witnessing and its witness), hidden and structural; the light it casts and the image it shows are the "outer" aspects (perceiving and object), visible and functional. But face, back, light, and image are, every one of them, nothing but the same bronze: "以真收妄，則若背若面若光若像，無非是銅" ("gathering the false back into the true, whether back or face, light or image, none of it is anything but bronze"). The dream analogy that follows is not, on his reading, a claim that the world is unreal in the sense of not mattering — it is a claim about where its reality is located: a dream-tiger can still make the dreamer's heart pound, exactly as this world's pleasures and sufferings are fully felt, without either one requiring an object standing somewhere outside the mind that is having the experience.
The Treasury That Cannot Be Destroyed
「復次，彼心名如來藏，所謂具足無量無邊不可思議無漏清淨功德之業。以諸佛法身，從無始本際來，無障無礙，自在不滅，一切現化種種功業，恒常熾然，未曾休息。所謂遍一切世界，皆示作業，種種化益故。以一佛身，即是一切諸佛身。一切諸佛身，即是一佛身。所有作業亦皆共一，所謂無分別相，不念彼此，平等無二。以依一法性而有作業，同自然化，體無別異故。如是諸佛法身，遍一切處，圓滿不動故，隨諸眾生死此生彼，恒為作依。譬如虛空，悉能容受一切色像種種形類，以一切色像種種形類，皆依虛空而有，建立生長。住虛空中，為虛空處所攝。以虛空為體，無有能出虛空界分者。當知色像之中，虛空之界不可毀滅。色像終壞時，還歸虛空。而虛空本界，無增無減，不動不變。諸佛法身，亦復如是，悉能容受一切眾生種種果報。以一切眾生種種果報，皆依諸佛法身而有建立生長。住法身中，為法身處所攝。以法身為體，無有能出法身界分者。
「當知一切眾生身中，諸佛法身亦不可毀滅。若煩惱斷壞時，還歸法身。而法身本界，無增無減，不動不變。但從無始世來，與無明心俱，癡闇因緣熏習力故，現妄境界。以依妄境界熏習因緣故，起妄想相應心，計我、我所，造集諸業，受生死苦，說彼法身名為眾生。若如是眾生中，法身熏習而有力者，煩惱漸薄，能厭世間，求涅槃道，信歸一實，修六波羅蜜等一切菩提分法，名為菩薩。若如是菩薩中，修行一切善法滿足，究竟得離無明睡者，轉名為佛。當知如是眾生、菩薩、佛等，但依世間假名言說，故有差別。而法身之體，畢竟平等，無有異相。
「善男子！是名略說一實境界義。」
"Furthermore, that mind is called the tathāgatagarbha — meaning it is fully endowed with the deed of measureless, boundless, inconceivable undefiled and pure merit. For the Dharma-body of all buddhas, from the beginningless ultimate limit, is without obstruction and without hindrance, free and unceasing, its every manifestation and transformation, its every kind of meritorious work, forever ablaze and never once at rest. That is to say, it pervades every world, everywhere showing forth its deeds, benefiting beings by every kind of transformation. One buddha's body is precisely the body of every buddha; the bodies of every buddha are precisely the body of one buddha. Whatever deeds there are, they too are all held in common — that is to say, without any mark of discrimination, without thought of this or that, equal and without duality. For it is in dependence on one single Dharma-nature that deeds exist at all, alike arising spontaneously, their substance without any distinction. Since the Dharma-body of all buddhas, in this way, pervades every place, perfect and unmoving, it forever serves as the support on which sentient beings depend as they die here and are born there. It is like empty space, which is able to contain every kind of form and shape, since every kind of form and shape exists only in dependence on empty space, established and given rise to within it, abiding within empty space, contained within the domain of empty space — taking empty space as its substance, so that nothing can ever go beyond the bounds of the domain of empty space. One should know that, within any form or shape, the domain of empty space can never be destroyed; when a form or shape finally comes to ruin, it returns again to empty space, while the original domain of empty space itself has no increase and no decrease, is unmoving and unchanging. The Dharma-body of all buddhas is just the same — it is able to contain every kind of retribution of every sentient being, since every kind of retribution of every sentient being exists only in dependence on the Dharma-body of all buddhas, established and given rise to within it, abiding within the Dharma-body, contained within the domain of the Dharma-body — taking the Dharma-body as its substance, so that nothing can ever go beyond the bounds of the domain of the Dharma-body.
"One should know that, within the body of every sentient being, the Dharma-body of all buddhas can likewise never be destroyed. When afflictions are cut off and destroyed, one returns again to the Dharma-body, while the original domain of the Dharma-body itself has no increase and no decrease, is unmoving and unchanging. But from beginningless ages, being joined together with the mind of ignorance, and by the force of the causes and conditions that habituate one to dark delusion, a false realm appears; and because of the causes and conditions that habituate one to this false realm, a false, corresponding mind arises, reckoning 'I' and 'mine,' accumulating every kind of karma, and undergoing the suffering of birth and death — and it is this same Dharma-body that is, in this state, called a sentient being. If, among such sentient beings, the habituating power of the Dharma-body grows strong, one's afflictions gradually grow faint, one becomes able to be weary of the world, seeks the path to nirvāṇa, believes in and returns to the one reality, and cultivates the six perfections and every factor of enlightenment — such a one is called a bodhisattva. If, among such bodhisattvas, the cultivation of every wholesome dharma reaches its fullness, and one at last comes to be free of the sleep of ignorance — one is then called a buddha. One should know that sentient being, bodhisattva, and buddha are distinguished only by the world's own conventional names and language; but the substance of the Dharma-body itself is, in the end, entirely equal, without any difference of mark at all.
"Good son! This is called a brief account of the meaning of the one real realm."
Zhixu tests the space-analogy at unusual length, listing six ways it genuinely holds — no beginning or end, no arising or ceasing, present everywhere, containing without limit, without obstruction, ungraspable — before listing six ways it fails, the sharpest being the first: "虗空頑然，法身真覺" ("space is inert and insensate; the Dharma-body is true awareness"). No metaphor, on his reading, can ultimately carry the weight of what is being pointed at, which is why he closes this whole section with a story rather than another analogy: a blind man trying to learn the color of milk from people describing it to him — hearing it likened to a crane, he imagines something in motion; hearing it likened to snow, he imagines something cold; hearing it likened to powder, he imagines something soft — piling up correct-sounding descriptions that never once let him actually see white. "終不能見乳之真色" ("in the end he still cannot see milk's true color"). Every image in this section — sunlight, ice, mirrors, waves, the vastness of space — is offered the same way milk's color is offered to the blind man: useful, not false, but never a substitute for what only direct recognition of one's own present mind can supply.
On the closing claim that "sentient being," "bodhisattva," and "buddha" differ only in name, Zhixu reaches for the plainest image in the whole section: a sentient being is like ice, a buddha like pure water, and a bodhisattva or a śrāvaka like ice partway through melting — "但轉其名，無實性矣" ("only the name changes; there is no change at all in the underlying nature"). The dampness that is ice's own nature is never any less present in the ice than it is in the water it eventually becomes; what changes across the three names this passage lists is never the substance itself, only how thoroughly the delusion obscuring it has thawed.
Part 4 Complete
This closes Part 4: the sūtra's own account of the one real realm — mind-nature unborn and unceasing, present whole in every being rather than divided among them; the demonstration that neither the mind that seems to think nor the world it seems to perceive can be found as a separately existing thing, each instead propping up the other moment by moment; and the tathāgatagarbha, the treasury of that nature which no affliction can ever actually destroy, making "sentient being," "bodhisattva," and "buddha" three names for a single substance no more altered by the names than ice is altered by being called ice rather than water. Part 5 turns to the two contemplations Kṣitigarbha builds directly on this foundation — the Mind-Only Contemplation and the Suchness Contemplation — the practice this whole doctrinal exposition has been preparing.
Continue to Part 5 — Two Ways to Watch the Mind →