What Is the True Substance of Matter?

The material things we see are actually piles of particles, composed of the four great elements, and there is no substantial solid form of matter.

These particles constantly arise, cease, mutate, and transform—this is precisely the phenomenon produced by the tathāgatagarbha in the form of delivering and recycling the seeds and subtle particles of the four great elements. Therefore, the tathāgatagarbha corresponds to and makes contact with external material form; all subtle particles of the four great elements belong to the tathāgatagarbha, so there is no question of whether the tathāgatagarbha touches or does not touch the subtle particles of the four great elements and the six external sense-objects.

It is also part of His duty and innate capacity for the tathāgatagarbha to transmit the subtle particles of these six external sense-objects to any place. If a person has countless emanation bodies, it would not be surprising for his own tathāgatagarbha to transmit the six external sense-objects to those countless emanation bodies. 

Using the seeds of the four great elements, in different quantities and different arrangements and combinations, the tathāgatagarbha can generate boundless, immeasurable material form—something our mind consciousness cannot imagine. Because our merit is limited, our wisdom is limited, and our virtues and capacities are limited, and because we are obscured by the afflictions of ignorance, what we can know and understand has an extremely great limit. Therefore, we must eliminate ignorance, afflictions, and habitual tendencies, remove the obstructions in our own minds, so as to expand the capacity and vision of the mind, and grow wisdom to its utmost limit, attaining that realm of wisdom possessed by a Buddha.