The Craving and Ignorance of Sentient Beings

In the desire realm, there are five types of sensual pleasures: form, sound, scent, taste, and touch. All dharmas have corresponding dharma-dust; there is form dharma-dust, and also mental dharma-dust. Mental dharma-dust refers to the minds of the sixth consciousness and the seventh consciousness, as well as the mental factors associated with these seven consciousnesses.

What sentient beings find most difficult to relinquish is precisely the conscious minds and mental factors, primarily the mental factors of feeling and perception. This is why cultivating meditative concentration is exceedingly difficult. Sentient beings constantly seek to know, constantly cling to sensations; the mental faculty (manas) is unwilling to enter samādhi, unwilling to extinguish these feelings and perceptions.

The attachment sentient beings have to the self and all dharmas is essentially an attachment to the ālaya-vijñāna, because all these dharmas are the functional manifestations of the ālaya-vijñāna. Yet, despite this attachment, they remain unaware of the true nature of what they cling to—how pitiful! Sentient beings in the desire realm refuse to relinquish power once obtained, refuse to relinquish status once attained, refuse to relinquish wealth once acquired, and stubbornly cling to all manner of personal enjoyments—so exceedingly greedy! They do not know how supremely wondrous it is to become a Buddha, nor how truly worthy of pursuit it is; they lack even the aspiration to attain Buddhahood. O deluded sentient beings!