How does Tathāgatagarbha cognize the faculties, body, container world, and karmic seeds of sentient beings?

The tathāgatagarbha discerns sentient beings' faculties and physical bodies, the material environment, and karmic seeds by means of the perceiving-aspect (darśana-bhāga) of the tathāgatagarbha, and by means of the mental concomitants of the tathāgatagarbha. The five universally present mental concomitants of the tathāgatagarbha are: attention (manaskāra), contact (sparśa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saṃjñā), and volition (cetanā). Attention 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 receiving and accepting the faculties and physical bodies, the material environment, and karmic seeds; perception is discerning and knowing the faculties and physical bodies, the material environment, and karmic seeds; volition is deciding and carrying out actions. Thereupon, the seeds of the seven great elements or the four great elements are output, and the five aggregates, the eighteen realms, and the universe's material world begin to be created, and all dharmas appear. In the process of transformation and creation, the tathāgatagarbha must continually attend, continually make contact, continually feel, continually perceive, and continually exercise volition, until the transformation and creation is complete.

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

Because it only involves the karmic seeds of a single sentient being after all, being transformed and created solely by that sentient being's own tathāgatagarbha, it is relatively less complex; yet our mind consciousness still cannot imagine it, due to the lack of the wisdom of the varieties of paths. Moreover, the karmic seeds of different kinds of sentient beings differ, so the length of time needed to form a complete sentient physical body differs; this also involves the question of the size of sentient beings' physical bodies and the mode of birth—all matters of karmic seeds. For moisture-born, egg-born, transformation-born, and womb-born beings, the length of time to form a physical body all differs; even among womb-born beings, the time to form a physical body differs. 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.