The Tathāgatagarbha Manifests the Information of All Dharmas

Who reveals all the secrets about oneself that become known to others? When we interact with people, we can immediately grasp some general information about them. How is such information about others revealed? When looking at a photograph, there is no actual person present, and the other's tathāgatagarbha is not needed to transmit information. Yet we can still discern the person's personality, age, temperament, disposition, and life background. How is this known? For someone who died hundreds or thousands of years ago, as long as a trace remains—such as hair, teeth, etc.—a person with supernatural powers can use these relics to understand where that individual is now, what their identity is, and the condition of their five aggregates (skandhas) body. What is the basis for knowing this? Especially since the Buddha possesses immeasurable clairvoyance of past lives, knowing every single event, major and minor, from each person's beginningless eons ago, including the most minute details—how does the Buddha perceive all this?

Even when asleep, unconscious, or in a coma, the information of the five aggregates can still be revealed. Even a single photograph can disclose all the information about a sentient being. A photograph is jointly upheld by numerous tathāgatagarbhas; it is not upheld by a single person's tathāgatagarbha. Like written text, a photograph does not involve the other party's tathāgatagarbha or five aggregates. It is one's own tathāgatagarbha that manifests the photograph or text as internal form-dust (rūpa-dhātu). When consciousness possesses wisdom, it can contemplate, analyze, and process the hidden meanings within the photograph or text. Without wisdom, it contemplates and analyzes erroneously, arriving at incorrect conclusions.

Relics carry information left by their owner. The tathāgatagarbha can follow the clues to locate that person's tathāgatagarbha, thereby accessing all information about them. When consciousness seeks to know, it relies either on supernatural powers or on the mental faculty (manas) becoming alert to some important, relevant information. For example, if a person stays in a room and then leaves, and hours or half a day later a snake enters that room, it can sense that a human or another living being was recently present. This is because part of that person's information remains in the room—such as temperature, scent, etc. The snake can discern this information and then follow it to locate the person. The tathāgatagarbha is like that snake—extremely sensitive and omniscient. It depends on the wisdom of the conscious mind (mano-vijñāna) whether it can excavate the information from the mental faculty (manas) and tathāgatagarbha.

Tathāgatagarbhas are all within an "internet," constantly broadcasting all information about their own five-aggregates body to the outside world without reservation. Simultaneously, they can also obtain all information from other tathāgatagarbhas. Tathāgatagarbhas exchange information freely among themselves; there are no secrets. They neither intentionally conceal anything nor deliberately reveal anything; their mind is completely open. The mental faculty (manas) of every sentient being, relying on its own tathāgatagarbha, can also know relevant information within the other's tathāgatagarbha. Thus, the mental faculty can perceive the other, and consequently, those with a karmic connection experience a certain resonance.

The tathāgatagarbha can constantly perceive all information from the external environment of the five-aggregates body. Therefore, the mental faculty (manas) can constantly perceive the external objects of the six sense fields (ṣaḍ-āyatana). For significant information useful to oneself, the mental faculty alerts consciousness to know it. For unimportant information, the mental faculty handles it itself—either ignoring it or storing it in the tathāgatagarbha as a record. In this world, it is unknown what secrets cannot be revealed, or even if any secrets truly exist. Matters in a person's mind are not known only to themselves; there are even more thoughts and ideas unknown to them that others already know. How can there be any secrets? A person with clairvoyance of past lives can examine every experience of each individual since beginningless eons, down to the smallest detail, as if consulting an archive, rapidly retrieving everything without missing even a minor incident. But this is all accessed through the tathāgatagarbha. All secrets are ultimately revealed by the tathāgatagarbha.