The Fifth Patriarch's Dharma Transmission Gatha

The Fifth Patriarch's Dharma Verse: Sentient beings come to sow seeds; from the primal cause, the fruit will grow. Non-sentient beings have no seeds; without inherent nature, there is no birth.

Explanation: Sentient beings refer to living beings. Sentient beings possess the eighth consciousness, have five aggregates or four aggregates, exhibit mental activities of consciousness, have lifespan, and are living entities. Non-sentient beings lack the eighth consciousness, lack the seven consciousnesses, lack the five aggregates, exhibit no discriminative mental activities of consciousness, and are not living beings. "Primal cause" means that only because there exists this eighth consciousness as the mind-ground can the fruit be harvested. When Dharma seeds are sown upon sentient beings, these seeds are stored by the eighth consciousness; when conditions mature in the future, the eighth consciousness projects the seeds, and the karmic result forms. Sowing seeds upon non-sentient things is useless because non-sentient things lack a conscious mind to receive and accept them, nor do they possess an eighth consciousness to store the Dharma seeds; thus, they can never bear flowers or fruit. All dharmas, whether sentient or non-sentient, because they inherently lack self-nature, cannot be self-born; they all depend upon the eighth consciousness to manifest and be born according to various conditions.