Dharma Objects and the Five Sense Objects Exist Simultaneously

Material sense-objects and mental sense-objects together constitute material form; the two are simultaneously produced and manifested by the tathāgatagarbha and cannot be separated. If the two were not together, if they were separated, then the trichiliocosm would be nothing but a field of color, without physical substance and without content; then all material forms would have no distinction from one another, there would be no trichiliocosm, no existence of material form, and eye-consciousness could not arise either.

If the external world contained only the colors of manifest color, and the mental sense-object were separately created within the supreme faculty based on the material sense-object and the four great elements of the supreme faculty, then the external world would no longer qualify as an external world, and material forms would have no boundaries. Therefore, it is said that the mental sense-object and the material sense-object arise simultaneously, arising, ceasing, and changing together, both created at the same time by the tathāgatagarbha using the seeds of the four great elements.

By the same reasoning, the mental sense-object and the sound sense-object, the mental sense-object and the smell sense-object, the mental sense-object and the taste sense-object, and the mental sense-object and the touch sense-object all arise simultaneously, arising, ceasing, and changing together, and cannot be separated.