The Kinds of Sound Sense-Objects

The first volume of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra divides sound-dust into many kinds, and according to whether it is held and sustained by one's own tathāgatagarbha, it is classified into three types. The first type is sound held and sustained solely by one's own tathāgatagarbha, called sound of the great elements sustained by causal grasping. Examples include the sound of one's own speech, coughing, breathing, sounds emitted by internal organs, and so on. The second type is sound of the great elements both sustained and not sustained, such as the sounds produced by friction when one's own body comes into contact with external material things—for example, the sound of walking, the sound of picking things up, the sound of putting on clothes, the sound of the body striking against material objects, and so on. These are sounds produced by the interaction of one's own tathāgatagarbha with external material things. The third type is sound of the great elements not sustained, meaning that such sounds are not solely held and controlled by one's own tathāgatagarbha. For example, the natural sounds of the universe, the sounds of wind and rain, thunder, the flowing of oceans and rivers, the sounds of various machines, and so on—these are jointly held and sustained by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings sharing common karma.

There are many more aspects to the content of sound; sound has many attributes, and its classification of ownership is very difficult to delineate and very complicated. All of these are functions of the tathāgatagarbha, and the vast majority are the result of the joint sustaining and functioning of all the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings sharing common karma; they are all likewise produced from the arising, ceasing, and transformation of the four great elements of earth, water, fire, and wind. Everywhere there are the functions and operations of the tathāgatagarbha; there is simply no genuine function of the five aggregates of their own, and therefore the whole is precisely suchness. No one can find any single thing, any single dharma, that is not the functional operation of the tathāgatagarbha's seven great seeds; all are the workings of the tathāgatagarbha, and all must be credited to the tathāgatagarbha. The seven consciousnesses also depend on the tathāgatagarbha to extensively create the myriad karmic deeds. The tathāgatagarbha, in a simple-minded way, takes charge of everything, never discriminating and never refusing, responding to every request—this is called "responding to a thousand places that pray, at a thousand places"—going wherever there is something to be done, and this is also called neither coming nor going.