All Dharmas Are Without Self and Without Self-Nature

The spring rain falls in continuous drizzle, nourishing all things silently and imperceptibly. This is the perception of the spring rain; people take this feeling and cognition to be the self, and take the objects perceived to be what the self possesses, feeling that both the self and what belongs to the self are very real and substantial. Thus they grasp and cling to these perceptive faculties, and for the sake of these perceptions they create various bodily, verbal, and mental actions (karma); the karmic seeds are then stored in the tathāgatagarbha. When the karmic seeds mature, the tathāgatagarbha delivers them forth, and the one who created the karma accordingly receives the retribution of wholesome, unwholesome, or neither-wholesome-nor-unwholesome results. The cause lies in taking these perceptions as real, as being the self and what the self possesses, and thereby grasping, craving, and being averse to the people, things, and events perceived, creating karmic formations for the sake of perception. All karmic formations exist because of the self and arise from the self; hence it is said that where there is a self, offense arises.

Are the people, things, and events we perceive real, and can they be possessed by us? Let us analyze this. For example, the raindrops in the spring rain that we see are composed of the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind, and are produced by the tathāgatagarbha; the sound of raindrops striking the ground is also a sound-object composed of the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind, generated by the tathāgatagarbha. These external material sense-objects and sound-objects are not generated by one person's tathāgatagarbha alone; they are jointly generated by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings who share common karma. The sound of raindrops striking the ground has an extremely complex process of generation: the arising of sound is related to the movement of matter, and the movement of matter is related to the changes of the four great elements.

When matter collides, sound is produced; when matter moves, collision occurs; the four great seeds arise, cease, and mutate, causing minute particles to move ceaselessly, and thus matter moves. Therefore it is said that all phenomena are the functions and operations of the tathāgatagarbha.

Sounds are divided into many kinds. The Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra, Volume One, contains a classificatory description of them: there are sounds held and sustained by one's own tathāgatagarbha alone, such as the voice of speaking, coughing, breathing, and sounds emitted by the internal organs; there are sounds produced by the friction of the body contacting external matter, such as the sound of walking, the sound of picking things up, the sound of putting on clothes, the sound of the body striking against objects, and so on—sounds emitted through the interaction of one's own tathāgatagarbha with external matter. As for the other sounds of nature in the universe, they are conjured up and jointly held by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings who share common karma.

There is much more to the content of sound; sound has many attributes, and its categorization is difficult to delineate and very complex. All of these are functions of the tathāgatagarbha; the vast majority are the result of the joint holding and operation of all the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings who share common karma, and all are produced from the arising, ceasing, and changing of the four great elements of earth, water, fire, and wind.

When form-objects, sound-objects, and dharma-objects contact the eye faculty, ear faculty, and manas, the tathāgatagarbha gives rise to the eye consciousness, ear consciousness, and mind consciousness, and then there is perception of the raindrops and the sound-objects of the raindrops striking the ground, followed by feelings. The form-objects, sound-objects, and dharma-objects are born of the tathāgatagarbha; the eye faculty, ear faculty, and manas are born of the tathāgatagarbha; the eye consciousness, ear consciousness, and mind consciousness are born of the tathāgatagarbha. All of these are illusory; no dharma has autonomy of its own; none is the self, nor does any belong to the self; fundamentally all are selfless.

Observing to the very end, we will discover that everywhere there are the functions and operations of the tathāgatagarbha—where is there any intrinsic reality of the five aggregates themselves? There is none at all. Therefore within any dharma there is no self, and none of it belongs to the self; the whole is precisely suchness (tathatā). No one can find a single thing, a single dharma, that is not the function and operation of the tathāgatagarbha's seven great seeds; all are the operations of the tathāgatagarbha, and all must be credited to the tathāgatagarbha. The seven consciousnesses moreover depend on the tathāgatagarbha to extensively create the various karmas, and the tathāgatagarbha never discriminates nor refuses—He responds to every request, which is called "responding in a thousand places to supplications from a thousand places." The Wondrous Sound Avalokiteśvara refers precisely to the tathāgatagarbha: wherever there is an affair, He goes there; this is also called "neither coming nor going."

The inner scent-objects and inner taste-objects are manifested and held by one's own tathāgatagarbha alone; the external taste-objects and external scent-objects are jointly manifested and held by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings who share common karma, and here there are also many complex factors. The inner tactile-objects are held and manifested by one's own tathāgatagarbha alone, while the external tactile-objects are jointly held and manifested by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings who share common karma; this too is very complex. By the same reasoning, the inner material sense-objects and inner mental sense-objects are manifested by the tathāgatagarbha alone, while the external material sense-objects and external mental sense-objects are jointly manifested by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings who share common karma. The six faculties, six objects, and six consciousnesses are all illusory appearances, none of them real; all are born of the tathāgatagarbha, just like the conjured sounds of wind and rain—passing by without lingering.

The sounds we hear now are in fact sounds that have already passed: by the time a sound is emitted and transmitted to our ear faculty, some time has already elapsed; when the tathāgatagarbha then manifests the consciousness-mind to discern it, still more time has passed; and by the time a response is made and sent back, yet more time has passed. The discriminations and reactions of the consciousness-mind on the other five faculties are likewise all responses to sense-objects of the past—there is no present moment. Therefore everything we do is in the past tense, never the present moment. Hence it is said that all dharmas have no self-nature of their own; all are the functions and operations of the tathāgatagarbha, and none of them is the self.