The Dharma of Ordinary Beings and the Dharma of Sages

具足凡夫法，凡夫不知，凡夫若知，即成圣人。具足圣人法，圣人不知，圣人若知，即是凡夫。

The tathāgatagarbha is inherently endowed with all dharmas, and these dharmas include conditioned and unconditioned dharmas, as well as the dharmas of ordinary beings and the dharmas of noble ones. The conditioned dharmas are the worldly dharmas of the three realms created by the seven consciousnesses—the five aggregates and eighteen realms that the tathāgatagarbha gives birth to. The unconditioned dharmas are the purity and suchness displayed when the tathāgatagarbha operates within the body of the five aggregates; they also represent the mind-dharma of the tathāgatagarbha.

The tathāgatagarbha is endowed with all the worldly dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms, yet ordinary beings do not know this, because the seven consciousnesses have ignorance that obscures one's own mind, taking the dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms as truly existent, not knowing that all these dharmas are illusorily manifested by the tathāgatagarbha. When sentient beings of ordinary status cultivate and study the Mahāyāna dharma, once they awaken to the tathāgatagarbha, they come to know that all worldly dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms belong to the dharmas within the tathāgatagarbha, that the tathāgatagarbha is inherently endowed with the seeds of all dharmas, and that when the causes and conditions are complete, it will give birth to all dharmas in accordance with those seeds—the self of the five aggregates is something illusorily projected, and therefore is not-self. At that point, this person transforms from an ordinary being into a sage. When the Fifth Patriarch expounded the Diamond Sutra, the Sixth Patriarch, because he understood the principle that self-nature is inherently endowed with all dharmas—understanding the five "how unforeseen is self-nature (svabhāva)"—became a sage.

The tathāgatagarbha is a transcendent dharma, without ignorance and afflictions; therefore it is endowed with noble nature, endowed with the dharmas of the noble ones, and endowed with unconditioned dharmas. Throughout beginningless kalpas, His own mind has always been pure and unconditioned, without a trace of ignorance, without a trace of affliction, without a trace of self-nature; He gives birth to all dharmas yet does not cling to any dharma. In the operation of all dharmas, He always displays the purity, suchness, absence of affliction, and absence of ignorance of His own substance, never turning along with the myriad states. Yet the noble nature inherently possessed by the substance of the tathāgatagarbha—He never knows it Himself, nor does He know whether He is ordinary or noble, conditioned or unconditioned.

If one could know that the tathāgatagarbha is endowed with the pure and unconditioned dharmas of the noble ones, and know the true and such nature of the tathāgatagarbha, then this knowing mind would be a deluded mind endowed with conditioned nature. The deluded mind is a worldly dharma, and worldly dharma is the ordinary; the transcendent tathāgatagarbha is the noble. If someone were to say that the tathāgatagarbha knows that it is endowed with pure and unconditioned nature, the tathāgatagarbha would immediately become a worldly, arising-and-ceasing deluded mind, becoming an ordinary being, and would no longer be the transcendent mind-substance of the tathāgatagarbha. However, the tathāgatagarbha forever lacks this kind of knowing nature; it is forever the so-called transcendent sage. Therefore, He is endowed with the dharmas of the noble ones yet does not know it Himself.