The Meaning of "The Last to Depart and the First to Arrive — the Master of the House"

The consciousness that departs last and arrives first refers to the tathāgatagarbha, and the one who acts as the master is also the tathāgatagarbha. "Departs" means that when the five aggregates perish, the tathāgatagarbha is the last to abandon the physical body. Once it no longer personally sustains the physical body, the body becomes a corpse; at the same time, the tathāgatagarbha, together with the tathāgatagarbhas of other sentient beings, jointly sustains the corpse, causing it to undergo the changes of arising, abiding, altering, and ceasing, until after a certain kalpa it all disappears without remainder. At death, the five sense consciousnesses perish first, then the mind consciousness gradually perishes; when the manas feels there is no hope of remaining alive, it also departs immediately—it does not perish. At the same time, the tathāgatagarbha cannot sustain the body alone, so it too leaves the physical body. This "leaving" is an expedient expression; there is no more accurate way to express it, so it must be stated this way.

"Arrives" refers to the initial conception. When a sentient being in the neutrino-body (antarā-bhava) enters the womb, it is the tathāgatagarbha that enters and dwells in the fertilized egg, drawn in by the manas, and the manas also enters and dwells there. Thus the initial nāma-rūpa of the five aggregates comes into being; when the five aggregates of nāma-rūpa are complete, the being is born as an infant. If the tathāgatagarbha does not enter and dwell there, the fertilized egg cannot grow, and there would be no nāma-rūpa, no body of the five aggregates, no sentient being. The "entering" and "arriving" here are also expedient expressions, used for the convenience of conveying the meaning; there are no more suitable words to express this idea.

The tathāgatagarbha is the master of sentient beings. Life after life it creates the five-aggregate bodies of sentient beings, sustains the five aggregates of sentient beings, records and stores their bodily, verbal, and mental actions, outputs karmic seeds, and brings about the karmic retribution of sentient beings. The tathāgatagarbha is the principal consciousness through which sentient beings transmigrate in the three realms and six paths, and it is also the principal consciousness by which sentient beings escape transmigration and attain buddhahood.