The Dharma Preaching Gatha of Kasyapa Buddha

The intrinsic nature of all sentient beings is pure; fundamentally unborn, there is nothing to extinguish. This very body and mind are illusory manifestations, and within these illusions, there is no real sin or merit.

Explanation: Sentient beings refer to the five aggregates (skandhas). The five aggregates are illusory manifestations of the eighth consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna), existing in a non-dual relationship with it. Their essence is fundamentally the true suchness, the eighth consciousness. This true suchness, the eighth consciousness, is the inherently pure mind, intrinsically pure since time without beginning, devoid of defilement. Therefore, based on the true suchness itself, the sentient beings born from it—the five aggregates—are of a pure nature; they are the nature of the true suchness, the Tathāgatagarbha.

If one separates from the true suchness, the eighth consciousness, and views each individual sentient being composed of the five aggregates alone, they appear defiled, subject to birth and death, change, impermanence, and selflessness. This is because the true suchness, the eighth consciousness, has existed inherently since beginningless kalpas; it was never born, has never perished, and will never perish. Therefore, based on the eighth consciousness, the five-aggregate sentient beings are also unborn and undying, as their essence is the attribute of the eighth consciousness.

Since the eighth consciousness stores the seeds of the five aggregates, which, encountering conditions, give rise to the five aggregates of sentient beings, and since the eighth consciousness endures perpetually without cessation, it can continuously generate the five-aggregate bodies without end. Thus, from an overall and long-term perspective across kalpas, the five aggregates are eternally existent and indestructible, persisting even until Buddhahood and beyond. Buddhas use these very five-aggregate bodies and minds to benefit and bring joy to sentient beings endlessly. Only when viewed as individual five-aggregate entities do they appear subject to birth and death.

The sentient beings composed of the five aggregates—their physical body (rūpa skandha) and the mental aggregates of sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness (vedanā, saṃjñā, saṃskāra, vijñāna)—are all manifested by the true suchness, the eighth consciousness, in accordance with various conditions, much like an illusionist conjures phantom figures in empty space. Just as the sins and meritorious deeds performed by these phantom figures are illusory and unreal, bearing no true karmic retribution of sin or reward, so too are sentient beings illusory manifestations. Whatever sins or meritorious deeds they perform, their karma is illusory and unreal. If the body acts, the body is illusory; if the conscious mind acts, the consciousness is a phantom without substantial reality. Since it is illusory and without substantial reality, the sins and meritorious deeds performed are also illusory and unreal. There is no real karmic retribution of sin or reward, and without a real agent, there is no doer of actions.