What Is the Manifestation of One's Own Mind?

The Buddha said that all dharmas are immediate manifestations from one's own mind (sva-citta-pratyakṣa). One's own mind is the true mind, the mind that never perishes. "Immediate manifestation" refers to things that actually exist, what can presently appear before us—not fabricated or imagined, not arrived at by comparison. What is arrived at by comparison is called inference; what is imagined is called non-valid cognition. All dharmas arise from causes and conditions, and therefore are conditioned dharmas. All phenomena within conditioned dharmas are manifested upon one's own mind; that is to say, all dharmas are manifested by one's own mind and transformed by one's own mind. Apart from the mind there are no dharmas at all, and apart from the mind there are also no conditioned dharmas.

Since conditioned dharmas are immediate manifestations from one's own mind, generated by one's own mind, they are not real dharmas. A dharma that is generated can cease; whatever arises must cease, and what never arises does not cease. Dharmas generated by causes and conditions are all subject to arising and ceasing: when causes and conditions are complete, they arise; when causes and conditions disperse, they cease. Therefore they are illusory dharmas, not real dharmas. That is why the World-Honored One instructed us to abandon craving and attachment to these dharmas generated by causes and conditions. Craving these illusory dharmas is the cycle of birth and death, is suffering and distress. As for the true dharma, the World-Honored One never instructed us to abandon it, because it cannot be abandoned in the first place; yet we should also not cling to Him—clinging to anything is wrong. The intrinsic nature of one's own mind has always been without attachment; it has never attached to anything. When the World-Honored One instructs us to accord with our own mind, there is then no birth-and-death or affliction.