The Fifth Patriarch's Verse on Transmitting the Dharma

The Fifth Patriarch's dharma-transmission gāthā: 有情来下种，因地果还生；无情亦无种，无性亦无生。

Explanation: Sentient beings (sattva) refers to living beings; sentient beings have the eighth consciousness, have the five aggregates or four aggregates, have the activity of the conscious mind, have a lifespan, and are living beings. Insentient things lack the eighth consciousness, lack the seven consciousnesses, lack the five aggregates, have no discriminating activity of the conscious mind, and are not sentient beings. The "ground of causation" (因地) means that it is only because there is the eighth consciousness as this mind-ground (心地) that fruits can be harvested. When the seed of the Dharma is planted in a sentient being, these seeds are stored by the eighth consciousness; in the future, when the conditions ripen, the eighth consciousness outputs the seeds, and the karmic retribution takes form. Planting seeds in an insentient object is useless, because an insentient object has no conscious mind to receive and accept them, nor an eighth consciousness to store the seeds of Dharma, so they can never blossom and bear fruit. All dharmas, whether sentient or insentient, because they lack inherent self-nature of their own, cannot give birth to themselves; all must arise and manifest through the eighth consciousness in dependence on various conditions.