Sectional Birth and Death and Transformative Birth and Death

Those who have not realized the First Ground are called ordinary unenlightened beings, while those who have attained the First Ground are sages, having eliminated the state of ordinary unenlightened beings and ceasing to create karmic actions leading to birth and death. Sentient beings who have not eradicated the karmic seeds of defilement associated with birth and death all belong to the category of unenlightened beings. After the end of one lifespan, they will experience another life, born at a different time and in a different place—whether in the heavens, the human realm, hell, or as hungry ghosts—thus referred to as being born at different times and in different places. Both First Ground Bodhisattvas and ordinary unenlightened beings undergo birth and death with limitations. For example, a human may live for a hundred or eighty years, or even a thousand or eight hundred years. When that lifespan ends, the next life begins; this segmented process of birth and death is called "birth and death with limitations." If a First Ground Bodhisattva is reborn in the heavenly realm, their lifespan is extremely long; if reborn in the human realm, their lifespan is the same as that of ordinary beings, and they too experience birth and death with limitations; if they are reborn in the animal realm through the power of their vows, their lifespan is as short as that of animals, and they also experience birth and death with limitations. Apart from birth and death with limitations, there is also birth and death through transformation. Birth and death through transformation refers to an extremely long lifespan, yet the karmic seeds of defilement associated with birth and death still remain uneradicated within the Tathāgatagarbha mind, continuing to give rise to karmic actions of birth and death. The false appearances of birth and death cannot be permanently extinguished, and the seeds of arising and ceasing within the mind cannot be severed until Buddhahood is attained. Therefore, there exists birth and death through transformation.