"All dharmas are empty, cause and effect are not empty" means: all dharmas are empty, that is, all dharmas are empty. But only cause and effect are not empty.
"All dharmas are empty, cause and effect are not empty" is not only an attitude towards life, but also a guideline for human conduct. It means that all dharmas are empty, that is, all dharmas are empty. But only cause and effect are not empty. In this life, everything has cause and effect, everything has cause and effect, and nothing can escape cause and effect.
Some people think that happiness falls from the sky, but they don’t know that every bit of happiness can only be obtained by one’s own efforts. Some people think that suffering is punishment from God, but they don’t know that the retribution is just because they fell into the wrong path for a while. Only by sowing the causes of happiness can we reap the fruits of happiness. On the edge of the long river of life's history, you have planted the flowers of "cause" and irrigated the soil of "fruit", so that you can see the day when the flowers bloom and bear fruit.
The basic concept of "all dharmas are empty, but cause and effect is not empty"
All dharmas are empty. This sentence is a classic and is recognized by everyone. Because everything is produced by the combination of causes and conditions, and does not have a separate, fixed, and permanent existence. So ultimately, it is unavailable. All the things mentioned here are all dharmas. It includes visible objects, invisible thoughts, and even Buddhism itself.
So it is everything. They all follow this law (all things are caused by the combination of causes and conditions). Precisely because this law is followed, all dharmas have their origin and cessation. In fact, dependent origination and dependent cessation are cause and effect. Because of the cause, there is the effect. In other words, these two sentences are actually one sentence. All dharmas are empty, which means that all dharmas are dependent on their origin and cessation. Cause and effect are not empty, and all dharmas are dependent on their origin and cessation.