The Tathāgatagarbha Can Display Information of All Dharmas

Regarding every person's secrets about themselves — who is it that leaks them out and makes them known to others? When we come into contact and interact with people, we can immediately understand some general information about the other party. How is other people's information revealed? When looking at a photograph, there is no real person present, and there is no need for the other person's tathāgatagarbha to transmit information. Yet we can still discern the other person's character, age, temperament, disposition, and life background — how is this known? For people who died hundreds or even thousands of years ago, as long as they left behind a few relics, such as hair, teeth, and so on, those with spiritual powers can use these relics to understand where this person is now, what identity they have, and what the condition of their five-aggregate body is. Based on what is this known? Especially the Buddha, who possesses immeasurable superknowledge of past lives — everything about every person, great and small, from countless kalpas without beginning, the Buddha knows completely, including the most subtle details. How does the Buddha come to know these things?

When asleep or unconscious without awareness, information from the five aggregates can also be revealed. Even a single photograph can reveal all of a sentient being's information. A photograph is co-maintained by many tathāgatagarbhas; it is not something that one person's tathāgatagarbha can maintain alone. Photographs, like written words, do not involve the other person's tathāgatagarbha and five aggregates. It is one's own tathāgatagarbha that transforms the photograph and text into internal form-objects. When consciousness possesses wisdom, it can contemplate, analyze, and process the hidden meaning within photographs and text; when it lacks wisdom, it contemplates and analyzes erroneously, reaching incorrect conclusions.

Relics carry information left behind by their owner. The tathāgatagarbha can follow the trail to find that person's tathāgatagarbha, and then understand all the information from the other's tathāgatagarbha. When consciousness wishes to know, one way is through spiritual powers, and another is through the manas being alerted to certain important and relevant information. For example, if a person stays in a room and then leaves, and after a few hours or half a day a snake enters that room, it can know that a person or a living being was just residing there, because part of that person's information still remains in the room — such as temperature, odor, and so on. The snake can discern this information and then follow it to find that person. The tathāgatagarbha is just like that snake — extremely sensitive and knowing everything. It simply depends on the wisdom of the mind consciousness and whether it can excavate the information from the manas and the tathāgatagarbha.

The tathāgatagarbha is always on the internet, publishing all information about its five-aggregate body anytime and anywhere, without holding anything back. At the same time, it can also obtain all information from other tathāgatagarbhas. The tathāgatagarbhas exchange with one another; there are no secrets. They neither deliberately conceal anything nor intentionally reveal anything — His mind is completely open. Each sentient being's manas, relying on its own tathāgatagarbha, can also know the relevant information within the other's tathāgatagarbha. The manas can thus understand the other person, and so people with affinity will have a certain resonance.

The tathāgatagarbha can capture all information from the external world of the five-aggregate body anytime and anywhere, and the manas can thus connect with the six sense objects anytime and anywhere. Important and significant information useful to oneself alerts consciousness to know it; unimportant information is handled by the manas itself — either ignored or stored in the tathāgatagarbha as a record. In this world, I do not know what secrets cannot be leaked, nor do I know whether secrets even exist. The matters in everyone's mind are not known only to oneself; there are even more thoughts and ideas that one does not know oneself, which others have long since known. How could there be secrets in this world? Those with the superknowledge of past lives can quickly look up every being's experiences since beginningless kalpas, bit by bit, like consulting archives, without missing even a single small matter — but all of this is done through the tathāgatagarbha, and all secrets are leaked by the tathāgatagarbha.