All dharmas are created solely 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 seven great seeds used to create the myriad dharmas or karmic seeds, none of these exist within the seven consciousnesses. Therefore the seven consciousnesses cannot give birth to any dharma; they can only cast a shadow of the dharmas produced by the tathāgatagarbha within the mind, leave a shadow, 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 fabricates the object-aspects within the supreme faculty? When we are asleep and the six consciousnesses are absent, who transforms and fabricates the six sense objects? When we are unconscious and the six consciousnesses are absent, who transforms and fabricates the six sense objects? In all these cases, it is the tathāgatagarbha that transforms and fabricates them in accordance with karmic seeds, with the manas playing a cooperative role. Because the manas grasps 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 fabricate anything, because the six consciousnesses are absent. "All dharmas are created by the mind alone" and "the myriad dharmas are consciousness-only"—these two statements are different. "The myriad 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 an ordinary being, then a certain category of dharmas cannot be manifested—but objectively, that category of dharmas may still exist.

The Mind-Only School holds that all dharmas are born from the tathāgatagarbha; the seven consciousnesses are also included within the tathāgatagarbha, being dharmas born from the mind-substance of the tathāgatagarbha. The Consciousness-Only School takes the eight consciousnesses as its basis, with the seven consciousnesses subordinate to the tathāgatagarbha. There is no dharma gate that is not derived and extended from the tathāgatagarbha, and no dharma gate that can be established apart from the tathāgatagarbha. All dharma gates are gates within the tathāgatagarbha, all branches of the tathāgatagarbha. The Gate of Emptiness is the tathāgatagarbha's dharma gate of liberation, and the School of Emptiness is the tathāgatagarbha's school of emptiness (śūnyatā).

Only bhūmi bodhisattvas who possess the seed-wisdom of consciousness-only can observe that all dharmas are created by the tathāgatagarbha alone, and that all dharmas are true suchness (tathatā). All others cannot observe this. If any part is left out—not created by the tathāgatagarbha—then that would mean dharmas can exist outside the mind of the tathāgatagarbha. Such a view is the view of the non-Buddhists. Pre-bhūmi bodhisattvas (pūrvabhūmika bodhisattva) inevitably harbor some non-Buddhist ideas, and so they have not entered the Tathāgata's family and are not the Buddha's own sons. The difference between the inner path and the outer path is only a single thought.