Only When Sentient Beings Have Ignorance Do They Perceive the Phenomenal World

When the six sense faculties contact the six sense objects, the eighth consciousness produces the six consciousnesses. The coming together of these three—faculties, objects, and consciousness—results in contact. The six consciousnesses then discern the internal six sense objects, and sentient beings thereby come to know the meaning within these internal sense objects. Thus, the process of distinguishing and knowing is completed. What sentient beings perceive are the internal objects, the internal phenomenal aspects, not the external objects or external phenomenal aspects. Therefore, the six sense objects known by sentient beings are illusory. The internal objects are illusory, while the external objects may seem real relative to the internal ones, but they too are conjured by the eighth consciousness and are equally illusory and unreal. The only true reality is the unborn, undying true mind—the Tathagatagarbha, the eighth consciousness. Apart from this, all else is false, illusory, and unreal.

Sentient beings can never actually contact the external objects; they exist entirely within false appearances and illusory forms, like seeing flowers in the sky with diseased eyes. Do internal and external objects exist or not? When sentient beings have diseased eyes, they see flowers in the sky; when sentient beings have afflictions obscuring their mind's eye, they perceive all appearances as real and true. When the minds of sentient beings are free from affliction, they do not see flowers in the sky; they perceive only the nature of the Tathagatagarbha. For example, our five aggregates exhibit movement, change, actions, and functions. These false appearances are not negated; they exist. However, this existence is a false existence. These dharmas may not be fully comprehended now, but after realization, when various kinds of contemplative wisdom arise, then they will be understood. This is the directly perceived state of personal realization. No matter how much others explain it, one cannot truly grasp it through explanation alone, because this is not a matter of intellectual understanding. It must be personally confirmed through actual practice to be genuinely experienced. Intellectual understanding is unreliable and cannot resolve the problem of birth and death.