Twenty-one: No Dharma is the Dharma
The Buddha asked, “What do you think, Subhuti? Does the Tathagata think, “I have taught the Dharma’? Subhuti, whoever says that the Tathagata thinks this way slanders the Tathagata; he would misrepresent me by seizing on what is not there. Why? The Tathagata has taught that in the teaching of the Dharma there is no Dharma that can be pointed to as Dharma. Such is merely a name. That is why it is called the teaching of Dharma.”
Subhuti asked, “Blessed One, will there be beings in the future, five hundred years from now, at the time of the collapse of the Dharma, who will truly believe these teachings?”
The Buddha said, “Subhuti, there are neither beings nor no-beings. Why? The Tathagata has taught that what are called beings are true no beings. Such is merely a name. That is why the Tathagata has spoken of them as beings.”
Zen folk have it right that the Buddhadharma is a wordless-transmission. Yet, it is also no-transmission; the No Dharma is the Dharma transmission in that it transmits no-thing. Huang Po says that one needs to just have a tacit understanding of this and no-thing more. The Tathagata thus teaches no-Dharma AS the Wordless Buddhadharma. The same holds true for the dichotomy of beings and no-beings. True beings are beingless; thus the quality of absolute beinglessness contains no-beings. As earlier stated there is no teaching; there are also no-beings who believe in this no-teaching, teaching. The wordless teaching is thus a no-teaching for no beings. Those who grasp this no-teaching, teaching, are the Mahabodhisattvas who, through their union with the Absolute Tathatic Spirit, fully penetrate the No Dharma, Dharma of the Tathagatas.