The Greed and Ignorance of Sentient Beings

In the desire realm, there are the pleasures of the five desires: form, sound, smell, taste, and touch. On all dharmas there are mental sense-objects—there are material mental sense-objects, and there are also mental mental sense-objects. The mental mental sense-objects are the six consciousnesses and the seventh consciousness (manas), as well as the mental factors (caittas) of these seven consciousnesses.

What sentient beings find hardest to relinquish is, of course, the consciousnesses and their mental factors—mainly the mental factors of feeling (vedanā) and perception (saṃjñā). This is why cultivating meditative concentration is so very difficult. One always wants to know, always cares about feelings; the manas does not want to enter samādhi, does not want to extinguish these feelings and this capacity for knowing.

The craving that sentient beings have for self and for all dharmas is, in fact, a craving for the ālayavijñāna, because all these dharmas are the functions and activities of the ālayavijñāna. Yet despite this craving, they do not know what the substance of what they crave actually is—how pitiable! Sentient beings in the desire realm, once they have power, refuse to let it go; once they have status, refuse to let it go; once they have money, refuse to let it go; and no matter what, they refuse to give up the various enjoyments of their own person—so greedy! They do not know how supreme and how worthy of craving it is to become a Buddha, and they have no aspiration to become a Buddha at all. How deluded these sentient beings are!