What Exactly Is the Essence of Matter?

The material things we see are actually piles of particles, composed of the four great elements, and there is no substantial solid form of matter.

These particles constantly arise, cease, change, and transform; this is precisely the phenomenon produced by the tathāgatagarbha through transmitting and recycling the seeds of the four great elements and the particles of the four great elements. Therefore, the tathāgatagarbha corresponds to and contacts external material form; all particles of the four great elements belong to the tathāgatagarbha, so it cannot even be said whether the tathāgatagarbha contacts or does not contact the particles of the four great elements and the external six sense objects.

It is also His duty and innate capacity for the tathāgatagarbha to transmit the particles of these external six sense objects to any place. If a person has countless emanation bodies, it would not be surprising for his own tathāgatagarbha to transmit the external six sense objects to countless emanation bodies. 

Using the seeds of the four great elements, in different quantities and different arrangements and combinations, the tathāgatagarbha can generate boundless, immeasurable, and infinite material form—something our mind consciousness cannot imagine. Because our merit is limited, our wisdom is limited, and our virtues and capacities are limited, and because we are obscured by ignorance and afflictions, what we can know and understand has an extremely great limitation. Therefore, we must remove ignorance, afflictions, and habitual tendencies, remove the obstructions on our own mind-ground, so as to expand the capacity of the mind and our horizons, and grow wisdom to its utmost limit, attaining that realm of wisdom possessed by a Buddha.