“Now let us discuss this point.  The Kalpa of Emptiness is what the Taoist calls the Path of Emptiness.  The Path or the Reality, however, is not empty, but bright, transcendental, spiritual, and omnipresent.  Lao Tsz, led by his mistaken idea, called the Kalpa of Emptiness the Path; otherwise he did so for the temporary purpose of denouncing worldly desires.  The wind in the empty space is what the Taoist calls the undefinable Gas in the state of Chaos.  Therefore Lao Tsz said, ‘The Path brings forth one.’  The golden clouds, the first of all physical objects, is (what the Confucianist calls) the First Principle.  The rain-water standing (on the wind) is the production of the Negative Principle.  The Positive, united with the Negative, brought forth the phenomenal universe.  The Brahma-raja-loka, the Sumeru, and others, are what they call the Heaven.  The dirty waters and sediment are the Earth.  So Lao Tsz said, ‘One produces two.’  Those in the second region of the Rupra-loka, whose good Karma had spent its force, came down upon the earth and became human beings.  Therefore Lao Tsz said, ’The two produce three.’  Thus the Three Powers were completed.  The earth-bread and different classes of people, and so on, are the so-called ‘production of thousands of things by the Three.’  This was the time when people lived in eaves or wandered in the wilderness, and knew not the use of fire.  As it belongs to the remote past of the prehistoric age, previous to the reigns of the first three Emperors, the traditions handed down to us are neither clear nor certain.  Many errors crept into them one generation after another, and consequently no one of the statements given in the various works of scholars agrees with another.  Besides, when the Buddhist books explain the formation of the Three Thousand Worlds, they do not confine themselves merely within the limits of this country.  Hence their records are entirely different from those of the outsiders (which are confined to China).

“‘Existence’ means the Kalpa of Existence that lasts twenty Increases and Decreases.  ‘Destruction’ means the Kalpa of Destruction that lasts also twenty Increases and Decreases.  During the first nineteen Increases and Decreases living beings are destroyed; while in the last worlds are demolished through the three periods of distress (1) the period of water, (2) the period of fire, (3) the period of wind.  ‘Emptiness’ means the Kalpa of Emptiness, during which no beings nor worlds exist.  This Kalpa also lasts twenty Increases and Decreases.”

[FN#344] A.  ’Taoists merely know that there was one Kalpa of Emptiness before the formation of this present universe, and point out the Emptiness, the Chaos, the primordial Gas, and the rest, naming them as the first or the beginningless.  But they do not know that the universe had already gone through myriads of cycles of Kalpas of formation, existence, destruction, and emptiness.  Thus even the most superficial of the Hinayana doctrines far excels the most profound of the outside doctrines.’