No Seeds of Mental Factors in the Tathāgatagarbha

Mental factors are the auxiliary companions of consciousness; wherever there is consciousness, there are the five universally present mental factors. Some mental factors, when the six consciousnesses arise and operate, do not necessarily manifest and operate at that moment; those are then not called universally present mental factors—they may be the five object-specific mental factors, or afflictive mental factors, or possibly wholesome mental factors; these mental factors do not appear at all times. "Universally present" means that wherever there is consciousness, there are these mental factors; the mental factors and consciousness accompany each other inseparably—these are called universally present mental factors. The five universally present mental factors differ from the pervasiveness of the tathāgatagarbha: the five pervasivenesses of the tathāgatagarbha refer to the tathāgatagarbha's substance pervading the operation of all times, places, locations, realms, and dharmas, and the operation of the tathāgatagarbha's substance is likewise accompanied by its own five universally present mental factors.

Consciousnesses all operate in the form of mental factors; mental factors have no seeds and are not generated from seeds. As soon as a certain consciousness manifests, that consciousness operates in the form of mental factors. Mental factors operate in accompaniment with consciousness and are its auxiliary companions. Mental factors have no seeds; the eighth consciousness does not store the seeds of mental factors, nor do the other consciousnesses store the seeds of mental factors. Mental factors have no seeds, just as ignorance likewise has no seeds, and just as the conditioning forces dissociated from thought (citta-viprayukta-saṃskāra) likewise have no seeds.