All Dharmas Are Created Only by the Tathāgatagarbha

All dharmas are created by the mind alone. What does this mind refer to? It must refer to the tathāgatagarbha; apart from it, nothing can give birth to the myriad dharmas. Because the seven consciousnesses themselves lack self-mastery (avaśatā), cannot act autonomously, are subject to arising, ceasing, and change, and have no real substance, they cannot store seeds. Whether the seeds of the seven great elements used to create the myriad dharmas or karmic seeds, none of them exist in the seven consciousnesses. Therefore the seven consciousnesses cannot give birth to any dharma; they can only cast a shadow of the dharmas born from the tathāgatagarbha within the mind, leave a shadow, and manifest a shadow—beyond that, they are powerless to do anything else.

In the cessation attainment (nirodha-samāpatti), when the six consciousnesses are absent, who transforms and creates the object-aspects (nimitta) within the supreme faculty (indriya)? When one is asleep and the six consciousnesses are absent, who transforms and creates the realms of the six sense objects? When one is unconscious and the six consciousnesses are absent, who transforms and creates the realms of the six sense objects? In all cases, it is the tathāgatagarbha that transforms and creates them in accordance with karmic seeds, with the manas playing a coordinating role. Because the manas holds onto the body, the five faculties can function, and the tathāgatagarbha can transmit the shadows of the five sense objects through the five faculties. The six consciousnesses cannot transform and create anything, because the six consciousnesses are absent. "All dharmas are created by the mind alone" and "all dharmas are consciousness-only" are two statements with a difference. "All dharmas are consciousness-only" means that the myriad dharmas are manifested through the eight consciousnesses; if one of the consciousnesses is missing from the five aggregates and seven consciousnesses of a worldling, a certain class of dharmas cannot be manifested—but objectively, that class of dharmas may still exist.

The Mind-Only School holds that all dharmas are born from the tathāgatagarbha, and the seven consciousnesses are also included within the tathāgatagarbha, being dharmas born from the mind-substance of the tathāgatagarbha. The Consciousness-Only School takes only the eight consciousnesses, with the seven consciousnesses subordinate to the tathāgatagarbha. There is not a single dharma gate that is not derived and extended from the tathāgatagarbha, and not a single dharma gate that can be established apart from the tathāgatagarbha. All dharma gates are dharma gates within the tathāgatagarbha, all branches of the tathāgatagarbha. The Gate of Emptiness is the dharma gate of liberation of the tathāgatagarbha, and the Emptiness School is the emptiness (śūnyatā) school of the tathāgatagarbha.

Only bodhisattvas on the bhūmis who possess the consciousness-only seed-wisdom (种智) can observe that all dharmas are created solely by the tathāgatagarbha, and that all dharmas are true suchness (tathatā). Everyone else cannot observe this. If any part were left out—not created by the tathāgatagarbha—then that would mean dharmas could exist outside the mind-substance of the tathāgatagarbha. Such a view would be the view of the non-Buddhists. Pre-bhūmi bodhisattvas (pūrvabhūmika bodhisattva) inevitably retain some non-Buddhist ideas, and therefore have not yet entered the Tathāgata's family and are not the Tathāgata's own sons. The difference between the inner path and the outer path is only a single thought.