Four elements: earth, fire, water and wind, both empty, empty but not empty, not empty but empty, empty both earth, fire, water and wind. All: everything is one, and one is everything. Don’t take the form of Dharma, don’t take the form of illegality. Neither take nor leave. The four elements are empty, and there are only four ways to destroy the world: earth, fire, feng shui. Make it empty. Earthquakes, (ground and air) fires (fire and air), strong winds (wind and air), floods (water and air). That is to say, it is very intuitive to tell the world that existing matter will also be emptied by the four elements. Bodhisattva and Buddha's journey through kalpas is nothing more than passing through the four emptinesses through practice. None of the four methods will completely make external objects empty and want to jump out of the Three Realms. Not entering reincarnation can only be achieved through practice. Become a Buddha with no external objects in your mind. Only through practice. Water and air are the most powerful ones. When they destroy the old world, they create a new world without leaving any trace of the old things.
Buddhism talks about "the four elements are empty". It follows the inherent Indian thought and then deepens it and makes it Buddhist. This is because the four elements of earth, water, fire and wind are cosmic physics. For example, mountains and land belong to The earth is the element, oceans and rivers belong to the water element, the heat of the sun belongs to the fire element, and the airflow in space belongs to the wind element. If we transform them into human body physiology, for example, hair, bones and flesh belong to the earth element, blood secretion belongs to the water element, body temperature belongs to the fire element, and breathing belongs to the wind element. From the physical properties of the four elements, hardness belongs to the earth element, and moisture belongs to the water element. , warmth belongs to the fire element, and flow belongs to the wind element. But no matter how you analyze the four elements, they ultimately belong to the material world and cannot summarize the spiritual world. Therefore, materialists regard the four elements as the origin of the universe, but Buddhism never agrees with this statement.
Because Hinayana Buddhism is only empty of self and not empty of Dharma, even though it regards physical phenomena as empty, it still believes that the extremely small substance of the four elements - "Dharma" - is real. However, Hinayana Buddhism is not materialism but pluralism, because the emptiness of Buddhism not only empties away the four elements, but also empties away the five aggregates, and the four elements are just one of the five aggregates. What are the five aggregates? They are form, feeling, thought, action, and consciousness. The first one belongs to the material world, and the last four belong to the spiritual world. The four major aggregates are form aggregates. The five aggregates are the law of life and death within the three realms. Only by eliminating the five aggregates can we transcend the life and death of the three realms. At the same time, the introduction of the five aggregates proves that Buddhism does not only teach that the four elements are empty, but also goes a step further to teach that the five aggregates are empty. Especially important, the focus of Buddhism is not on the four major elements, but on the consciousness aggregate. The three aggregates of feeling, thinking, and action are also the foil of the consciousness aggregate, and are used to show the wide range of functions of the spiritual world. big. Therefore, Buddhism is not only not a materialist, but a consciousness-only one.