How the Tathāgatagarbha Discerns Sentient Beings' Faculties and Body, the Material World, and Karmic Seeds

The tathāgatagarbha discerns sentient beings' faculties and physical bodies, the material environment, and karmic seeds by means of the perceiving-aspect of the tathāgatagarbha, and by means of the mental factors of the tathāgatagarbha. The five universally present mental factors of the tathāgatagarbha are: mental engagement (manaskāra), contact (sparśa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saṃjñā), and volition (cetanā). Mental engagement directs the mind toward the faculties and physical bodies, the material environment, and karmic seeds; contact is the tathāgatagarbha making contact with the faculties and physical bodies, the material environment, and karmic seeds; feeling is the receiving of the faculties and physical bodies, the material environment, and karmic seeds; perception is the discerning and knowing of the faculties and physical bodies, the material environment, and karmic seeds; volition is the decision to act and produce. Thereupon, the seven great seeds or the four great seeds are output, and the five aggregates, the eighteen realms, and the universe of the material environment begin to be produced—all phenomena thus appear. In the process of transformation and production, the tathāgatagarbha must continually engage in mental engagement, continually make contact, continually feel, continually perceive, and continually exercise volition, until the transformation and production is complete.

This process is one of transformation and production moment by moment, and its result may be the sudden manifestation of all phenomena, or possibly the gradual manifestation of all phenomena, depending on the karmic seeds. The formation of the universe and the material environment is, after all, not a simple matter but an enormously vast undertaking, involving the shared karmic seeds of immeasurable sentient beings. Its production is extremely complex, requiring the tathāgatagarbha of all beings sharing the karma to cooperate together, and it takes one quarter of a great kalpa—twenty small kalpas—to form the universe and the material environment. The formation of an individual sentient being's physical body and the realization of its karmic seeds, however, require far, far less time than the formation of the universe and the material environment.

Because it involves, after all, only the karmic seeds of a single sentient being, transformed and produced solely by that being's own tathāgatagarbha, it is relatively less complex; yet our mind consciousness still cannot imagine it, because we lack the wisdom of the varieties of paths. Moreover, since the karmic seeds of different kinds of sentient beings differ, the length of time required to form a complete sentient physical body also differs. This also involves the question of the size of sentient beings' physical bodies and the mode of birth—that is, the question of karmic seeds. For those born from moisture, from eggs, by transformation, and from the womb, the lengths of time required to form the physical body all differ; and even among womb-born beings, the lengths of time required to form the physical body also differ. Even among humans, some are born after three years, some after ten months, and some after an even shorter time—all due to differences in karmic seeds.