What Exactly Are Conditioned Dharmas?

The three-thousandfold great thousand worlds manifested by all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are conditioned dharmas (saṃskṛta-dharma). What exactly are they? Or are they nothing at all? These conditioned dharmas are all generated from the formless and markless seeds within the tathāgatagarbha; they are empty and illusory, and no dharma of real substance exists. Therefore, one cannot say what these conditioned dharmas are. But neither can one say that these conditioned dharmas are nothing at all, because these conditioned dharmas do exist in terms of their appearances and have their corresponding functions in worldly dharma. Although these functions are also illusorily manifested, and in reality they are the functions of the tathāgatagarbha, these functions do indeed have their effects—that is why they are called conditioned dharmas; otherwise, they would be unconditioned dharmas (asaṃskṛta-dharma).

Conditioned dharmas are called conditioned dharmas precisely because they possess the dharma-appearances and functions of the worldly realm; thus, names such as "such-and-such" are assigned to these conditioned dharma-appearances, and they are discriminated and grasped. A person of wisdom clearly understands the true face of these conditioned dharmas, yet still makes use of them without any hindrance or discord, with a mind at ease—free of greed and free of aversion, and without clinging to one side. Everything he does violates neither the ultimate truth nor the conventional truth, and with great wisdom he takes up the Bodhisattva's work of benefiting sentient beings.