The Five External Dusts Without Dharma Dust Do Not Exist

The height of mountains and the depth of water, being high and deep, are forms and appearances. The manifest color of the mountain must exist to set off the form of its height, and the form of the mountain's height must exist to delineate the scope of the mountain's color. The color of water must exist to set off the appearance of its depth, and the appearance of water's depth must exist to delineate the volume of water. The manifest colors of the five sense objects and the mental objects of form, appearance, and non-appearance are tightly interwoven, inseparable even for an instant. Otherwise, no color could exist or manifest. Therefore, external sense objects necessarily include mental objects; the six sense objects are complete and present together. It cannot be that only the five external sense objects exist while mental objects are absent. External sense objects without mental objects do not exist; they are merely imagined.

The claim that mental objects are manifested in the supreme sense base at the back of the brain based on the five sense objects has no basis whatsoever and is fundamentally untenable. External sense objects must inherently comprise the complete aspect of the six sense objects. When the Tathāgatagarbha initially creates them, it cannot create only manifest colors like visual hues alone, resulting in a boundless expanse of color devoid of form and substance. The world is not composed solely of colors. All objects possess their own shapes and characteristics, constituting the rich and diverse material world. For example, when the Tathāgatagarbha creates the five aggregates of the body, it cannot possibly create only the color of the physical body and then have the mental objects like height, shortness, fatness, thinness, etc., be separately created later in someone else's supreme sense base. This is absolutely impossible. No matter who imagines it, they cannot conceive of such a form for humans and sentient beings.