Sentient beings see the dust-objects (sense objects) only when they have ignorance.

When the six faculties contact the six sense objects, the eighth consciousness produces the six consciousnesses. When faculties, objects, and consciousnesses come together in contact, the six consciousnesses discern the inner six sense objects, and sentient beings thereby come to know the content of the inner six sense objects—thus the discriminating cognition is complete. What sentient beings cognize is the inner sense objects, the inner representations, not the outer sense objects, the outer representations; therefore the six sense objects that sentient beings cognize are illusory. The inner sense objects are illusory; relative to the inner sense objects, the outer sense objects seem real, but they are also conjured forth by the eighth consciousness, and are likewise illusory and unreal. What is truly real is the unborn and unceasing true mind—the tathāgatagarbha, the eighth consciousness. Apart from this, everything is false, all is illusory, conjured and unreal.

Sentient beings can never come into contact with the outer sense objects; they all live within illusory appearances and false appearances—merely a diseased eye gazing at flowers in the sky. Do the inner sense objects and outer sense objects exist or not? When a sentient being's eyes are diseased, he can see flowers in the sky; when a sentient being's mind-eye is afflicted with obstruction, he will see all appearances as real and true. When a sentient being's mind has no disease, he no longer sees flowers in the sky, but sees only the nature of the tathāgatagarbha. For example, our five aggregates have movement and activity; these false appearances are not excluded—they exist, but this existence is false existence. These dharmas may not be experientially realized at present, but after awakening and the arising of various contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdoms, one will then be able to understand. This is a personally realized realm of direct perception/valid direct cognition; no matter how others explain it, one cannot experientially realize it, because this is not a matter of intellectual understanding—it must be personally verified through actual practice before it can be experientially realized. What is merely understood is unreliable and cannot resolve the problem of birth and death.