Living beings who produce the purest, most sincere thought of belief upon hearing the Vajra Sutra are those who have planted good roots before limitless millions of Buddhas. Giving rise to such a true, real mind, a mind that is without the least divergence or skepticism, they obtain limitless and unbounded blessings and virtue.

Such people have realized the emptiness of people and so have no mark of self, others, living beings, or a life. Having no self means seeing the self as empty. Having no mark of others means seeing people as empty. Self and people both empty, living beings are also empty. Naturally when living beings are empty then there is no mark of a life, which refers to the continual quest for immortality as well as to the constant pursuit of all things which one loves and cannot see through.

Having realized the emptiness of people one should also realize the emptiness of phenomena, and relinquish the mark of the non-existence of phenomena as well. When there is no longer any judgment of phenomena as being right or wrong, then one has arrived at the basic substance of dharma.

If those living beings’ minds grasp at marks, if they hold to the mark of people, they still grasp at the four marks and have not obtained liberation. They have not genuinely put everything down. If they grasp at the mark of phenomena they are still attached to the four marks; if they grasp at the mark of the nonexistence of phenomena, they are also attached to the four marks, because they have not seen through and smashed them. They have not realized the emptiness of people, of phenomena, and of emptiness itself.

Regarding that principle, the Buddha often said to the bhikṣus, “You should know that the dharma which I speak is like a raft.”

The raft is used to cross the sea of suffering birth and death.

Before you have ended birth and death, you use the raft in cultivation. Once you have ended birth and death, you should put the raft aside. If you do not put the raft aside you have an attachment. If you do not put the dharma aside you have an attachment.

Attachment to the dharma can infect one like a disease. Using the dharma which teaches the emptiness of phenomena as medicine, the disease can be cured. Once cured, if a person fails to realize he is well and continues to take medicine, then he develops a senseless attachment to the medicine, and that amounts to yet another sickness. Those who have realized the emptiness of people and the emptiness of phenomena must also relinquish attachment to the non-existence of phenomena.

The marks of phenomena should be cast aside. When one has ended birth and death one should put phenomena aside. People and phenomena are empty. One should even cast aside true proper dharma, how much the more so the non-existence of phenomena. One should relinquish all one’s persistent attachments.