Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (75)

The mind faculty takes the dharmāyatana (mental sense-objects) as its object realm. The mind consciousness delights in craving the realms of mental sense-objects, and being drawn along by those realms, greed arises. For example, take a piece of cake: the cake has colors, which are seen by the eye consciousness; the shape manifested on the cake, the ingredients it contains, its nutrition, and so forth—these pieces of information are mental sense-objects (dharma-dust), which the manas confronts and the mind consciousness discerns. After the mind consciousness discerns it, it finds the cake sweet and delicious, and greedy craving arises. Because there is greedy craving, there is greedy conduct—one wants to take it for oneself and quickly get it into one's mouth, and at the same time may also think of ways to ensure one can eat it again in the future; this is greedy conduct. Greedy conduct is the bodily and verbal action; greedy thought is the mind's deluded scheming and feelings, which can be drawn along by sense realms and thereby decide to create karmic actions. Once the karmic action has been created, the seeds are stored in the tathāgatagarbha, and when the karmic seeds ripen, the retribution manifests. If the manas has been successfully perfumed in this way, this person will be gluttonous life after life.

If the cake eaten belongs to someone else, and when eating it, the other person does not know, or does not wish to give it, then it counts as stealing the cake. The karma of stealing is stored in the tathāgatagarbha, and when the karmic conditions mature, the retribution manifests, and one must repay the other person a thousandfold or more. For stealing one cake, the retribution is at least a thousandfold—in the future one must repay at least a thousand cakes. If it is an item of the Three Jewels that was stolen, or the belongings of a person of cultivated attainment, the repayment will be ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, or immeasurable times over; moreover, there is also the offense of the greedy mental nature within this. When the offense of the nature is severe, one must fall into hell to undergo evil retribution.