The Meaning of 'It Leaves Last and Comes First, Acting as the Master'

The consciousness that departs last and arrives first refers to the tathāgatagarbha, and the one who acts as the master is also the tathāgatagarbha. "Departs" means that when the five aggregates perish, the tathāgatagarbha is the last to abandon the physical body; if it no longer personally sustains the physical body, the body becomes a corpse. At the same time, the tathāgatagarbha, together with the tathāgatagarbhas of other sentient beings, jointly sustains the corpse, so that the corpse undergoes the changes of arising, abiding, altering, and ceasing, until at a certain kalpa it disappears entirely without remainder. At death, the five sense consciousnesses perish first, then the mind consciousness gradually perishes; when the manas feels there is no hope of remaining alive, it also departs—rather than perishing. At the same time, the tathāgatagarbha cannot sustain the body alone, and so it too leaves the physical body. This "leaving" is an expedient expression; there is no more accurate way to express it, so it must be stated this way.

"Arrives" refers to the initial conception. When sentient beings conceive within the neutrino-body (antarā-bhava), it is the tathāgatagarbha that enters and resides in the fertilized egg, drawn in by the manas, and the manas also enters and resides there. Thus there arises the initial nāma-rūpa (name-and-form) of the five aggregates; when the five aggregates of nāma-rūpa are complete, the being is born as an infant. If the tathāgatagarbha does not enter and reside, the fertilized egg cannot grow; there would be no nāma-rūpa, no body of the five aggregates, no sentient being. The "entering" and "arriving" here are also expedient expressions, used for the convenience of conveying the meaning, as there are no more suitable words to express this idea.

The tathāgatagarbha is the master of sentient beings. Life after life it creates the bodies of the five aggregates for sentient beings, sustains the five aggregates of sentient beings, records and stores the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of sentient beings, outputs karmic seeds, and actualizes the karmic causes and effects of sentient beings. The tathāgatagarbha is the principal consciousness through which sentient beings transmigrate within the three realms and the six paths, and it is the principal consciousness by which sentient beings escape saṃsāra and attain buddhahood.