Can Ordinary Beings Achieve the Transformation of the Basis as Tathāgatagarbha?

The initial success of the transformation of the basis as tathāgatagarbha occurs at the stage of a bodhisattva who has attained the bhūmis; pre-bhūmi bodhisattvas (pūrvabhūmika bodhisattva) are all striving to accomplish the transformation of the basis, learning how to transform it. Ordinary beings, having not realized the tathāgatagarbha, cannot rely upon it—they do not know where the tathāgatagarbha is or what its characteristics are, so how could they depend on it? It is like leaning on empty space: the tathāgatagarbha one imagines is not something actually visible, and thus cannot be relied upon.

Moreover, ordinary beings also cannot actively make use of the tathāgatagarbha. Not knowing where the tathāgatagarbha is, what its characteristics are, or what functions it performs, how could they utilize the tathāgatagarbha? Everyone is merely imagining the tathāgatagarbha—this is called conjecture and fantasy, or guessing. Ordinary beings may be allowed to guess, and may even guess seven or eight parts out of ten correctly, but it is of no use: the moment the mind consciousness ceases, everything before one's eyes turns pitch black, and one is left bewildered, not knowing what to do.

The mark of a successful transformation of the basis is that one's mental disposition has changed, becoming similar to the mental disposition of the tathāgatagarbha; afflictions have been eliminated and wisdom has grown. The transformation of the basis has not yet succeeded, but one is gradually changing oneself, subduing one's afflictions, and little by little increasing one's wisdom. When this accumulates to a certain degree and reaches a qualitative leap—afflictions eliminated, and the sixth and seventh consciousnesses transformed into wisdom—only then is the transformation of the basis accomplished, and even that is only preliminary; with the complete transformation of the basis, one becomes a Buddha. Therefore, one cannot use whether the transformation of the basis has succeeded as the criterion for judging whether one has seen one's true mind and attained enlightenment. Seeing one's true mind and attaining enlightenment has its own criteria and content; the transformation of the basis is not among those criteria.

The Buddha's teachings have been thrown into great confusion, and the reason for the confusion is that many people have never walked that path; they rely on understanding, inference, and guesswork. Even if their guesses are eight or nine parts out of ten close to the truth, they are still quite inaccurate, because after all they have not seen it with their own eyes, and their minds certainly cannot feel settled. A tiger drawn by copying a cat, after all, is not a tiger.