The Buddha-nature: the Original Source of All Living Beings (Issue 300)

Brought about by the Buddha-nature,
life goes on ceaselessly in the world with infinite transformations.

In the very beginning, the universe was a huge nebulous mass. When Heaven and Earth were created, there were no people and no living beings. You can’t really say that there was a world or there wasn’t a world. Basically, there was nothing at all. Later, during the phase of becoming, living beings came into the world bit by bit. Actually, where did human beings come from? Some people say humans evolved from apes. But then, where did apes evolve from? If it was possible for apes to turn into humans in the past, why can’t they turn into humans now? Strange! This unusual theory was concocted by ignorant people who wanted to be eccentric, claiming that humans evolved from apes. Why don’t they say that humans evolved from mice, or from caterpillars? How do they know that mice didn’t evolve from humans?

We have feathered creatures that fly in the air, aquatic creatures that thrive in water such as fish, turtles, shrimp, crabs, etc., humans and other creatures with blood and breathe, flowers and grasses, trees and all vegetations. Who is the original ancestor of all these? It is the Buddha-nature.

Brought about by the Buddha-nature, life goes on ceaselessly in the world with infinite transformations. Without the Buddha-nature, everything would cease to be. Only the Buddha-nature remains in existence and never exterminated throughout thousands of ages and myriads of generations. Hence, from the Buddha-nature, the Ten Dharma Realms are transformationally produced. The Ten Dharma Realms are not apart from a single thought. That single thought is the Buddha-nature, it’s another name for the Buddha-nature. Thus, people evolved from the Buddha-nature, and animals come into being when people descend lower in the cycle of rebirth. The principles are clearly explained in the Ten Dharma Realms.
Stupid people insist that apes were the ancestors of people. Islam has a story about pigs. Hinduism says cows are gods. These are all partial views. They only know a little; they don’t know the great functioning of the whole reality. So, they ended up deluding the world, writing books and preaching their doctrines, classifying things into categories, claiming, “This is science. That is philosophy.” In reality, these people are just looking for something to do because they have nothing better to do. Having nothing better to do after eating their fill, they go around confusing people.

Ultimately, how did people come into being? Let’s look at how chickens came into being. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Without a chicken, there’s no egg. Without an egg, there’s no chicken. That’s the “chicken question,” which has no final answer. Regarding people, who came first, the man or the woman? If you say that man came first, remember that a man is born from a woman’s womb. If you say that woman was first, remember that it takes a man for there to be conception. Since it was so long ago, people have forgotten just how humans came into being.