Have You Eaten Real Pork?

Question: When eating pork, how do the six consciousnesses eat it? Do they actually eat real pork? The four great elements of pork were constructed by the pig's tathāgatagarbha using the seeds of the four great elements, and have nothing to do with humans or the human tathāgatagarbha. So how do the pig's four great elements enter the human body and then disappear?

The external object-aspect of the pig's body—the real meat, the essential realm—can only be contacted by a person's tathāgatagarbha; the six consciousnesses can only contact the inner object-aspect. So how do the six consciousnesses contact the pork and eat it? The external object-aspect really is eaten until it is gone—amazing!

When you take pork into your mouth, the body faculties such as the lips, teeth, and tongue cannot contact the real pork; chewing cannot chew the real pork; the tongue consciousness cannot taste the real flavor of the meat; and the external object-aspect, the essential realm of the pork, cannot enter the stomach and intestines. In short, what the six consciousnesses contact are all false appearances; they cannot contact the true essential realm. If that is so, what is the point of eating meat? It is self-deception. The pig's tathāgatagarbha painstakingly transformed and produced that lump of meat—it has nothing to do with you, and you did not contribute any effort to it—so by what right do you eat the pig's meat? How is this any different from robbery and forcible seizure? Having learned Buddhism, do you still continue to act as a bandit and robber?