A few points in regard to your letter:

One of the major confusions for us is the idea of cause and effect. Both of these are notions, or conceptions. When we view some phenomenon as an effect – say, the world or universe – we are prompted to wonder “What was the cause?”

When we recognize that all things are empty, it becomes clear that an empty cause can be the cause of nothing more than an empty effect. When we have realized that the universe is empty of ultimate reality, we no longer question “What was its cause?”

Among our false ideas is that the “origination of things” is an effect, for which there has been a cause. But if an effect is dependent upon a cause, causes are the consequences of prior effects. No cause or effect is self-generating. (This is what is known as dependent-arising.)

Ramana Maharshi:

What is the standard of reality? That alone is real which exists by itself ,which reveals itself by itself and which is eternal and unchanging.

“Form is emptiness.” Form does not “exist”: it is empty of reality. And “emptiness” exists only as that which forms are empty of. Emptiness does not exist on its own; it is empty of existence. (The expression should read “form is emptiness and emptiness is emptiness.”)

John Pettit:

Emptiness as an absolute negation means that when the object of negation the false appearance of true existence is negated, there is nothing implied in its place.

So, causation is a conventional idea; it is not an ultimate (standing-alone) reality. From the ultimate standpoint, causation — the originating of anything — is not a reality: not anything has ever been originated or created.

Because not anything has actually been created, not anything inside the Dream is real. Likewise, not anything outside of the Dream is real. All is, in truth, empty of anything, anywhere. In fact with no origination, there is neither truth nor untruth in emptiness, there is only emptiness.

Yes, there is the appearance of forms. What are these forms? Empty. Who views them? You. And what are you? A form. And what are forms? Empty.

It’s not just that “the world is a dream”: You too are in that dream. It’s not that everything you see is unreal; the seer himself has no reality, therefore what can an unreal viewer see but further unreality?

David Eckel:

Things only arise conventionally, like a dream, by depending on other things that are just as conventional and illusory as themselves.

The Dream has no permanent, stand-alone, or true reality; and neither do you, being in the Dream.

Ludwig Borne:

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.