A Brief Account of the Nature of Mind Consciousness (64)

8. The height of mountains and the depth of waters—height and depth are shape-colors and expressive colors. Only when there is the manifest color of a mountain can the shape-color of its height be set off; only when there is the shape-color of the mountain's height can the range of the mountain's coloring be framed. Only when there is the color of water can the expressive color of its depth be set off; only with the expressive color of the water's depth can the volume of water be delimited. The five sense-object colors of manifest color and the mental sense-objects of shape-color, expressive color, and avijñapti-rūpa are tightly bound together and cannot be separated even for an instant. Otherwise, no kind of color could exist or appear. Therefore, external sense-objects must necessarily include mental sense-objects; the characteristics of the six sense-objects must be complete. It cannot be that only the five external sense-objects exist while there is no mental sense-object—external five sense-objects without mental sense-objects do not exist; they are merely imagined. The claim that mental sense-objects are manifested at the supreme faculty in the back of the brain in accordance with the five sense-objects has no basis whatsoever and simply does not hold. External sense-objects must be complete sixfold characteristics. When the tathāgatagarbha initially creates and transforms them, it cannot create only manifest colors such as coloration alone—a vast expanse of color without form or content. The world is not composed purely of colors. All kinds of objects have their shapes and properties; only thus is the material world rich and colorful. For example, when the tathāgatagarbha creates the five-aggregate body, it is impossible that it creates only the colors of the physical body, and then the mental sense-objects such as tall or short, fat or thin are separately created in someone else's supreme faculty. This is absolutely impossible—no matter how one imagines it, no one could conjure up such a form of humanity and sentient beings. Take another example: the golden ground of the land of bliss cannot have only golden color without hardness, extensiveness, and boundaries—otherwise, how could one walk upon the golden ground? The tathāgatagarbha manifests images like a mirror, and a mirror is faithful to the original appearance of external forms. It is impossible that the original appearance lacks length, size, height, or girth, yet the tathāgatagarbha could presumptuously reflect long and short, square and round, large and small, tall and short upon the mirror's surface. How would that be reflected? Would the tathāgatagarbha still be manifesting images like a mirror?