Are Defiled Seeds Transformed or Eradicated?

The seeds of karmic formations are subject to arising, abiding, alteration, and cessation, and cannot be converted into one another. Although wholesome and unwholesome states wax and wane against each other, the seeds of wholesome and unwholesome karma likewise cannot be converted into one another. Defiled seeds are the karmic seeds left behind by defiled karmic formations created with a defiled mind. When these seeds ripen and bear fruit, sentient beings will undergo evil retribution, and when the retribution is exhausted, the seeds are extinguished. If one repents of defiled karma and the mind is transformed to purity, the defiled seeds will also be eliminated, so that in future lives one will not undergo evil retribution or will undergo less of it. Therefore, defiled seeds are extinguished, not converted. If ignorance is gradually extinguished, the mind will become increasingly pure, clarity will gradually increase, and the defiled seeds will be eliminated in ever greater numbers, until they are completely extinguished and the mind is ultimately pure without remainder—then one becomes a Buddha. As ignorance grows ever thinner and clarity ever greater, the phenomena of the mind being defiled also diminish, and pure wholesome karma will increase more and more, until in the end there is only pure karma and pure seeds, with no defiled karma and no defiled seeds.

Some say that the tathāgatagarbha has both defilement and purity, and that this is why there is the teaching of transforming consciousness into wisdom. But in actuality, the essence of the tathāgatagarbha is a pure consciousness; it is only because it contains and stores the defiled karmic seeds created by the seven consciousnesses that the tathāgatagarbha is neither defiled nor pure (na saṃkleśo na vyavadānam). If the tathāgatagarbha did not store the defiled karmic seeds of the seven consciousnesses, the tathāgatagarbha would be the pure undefiled consciousness (amala-vijñāna). If the tathāgatagarbha had defilement, it would have afflictions and defiled karma; yet the tathāgatagarbha does not create any wholesome or unwholesome karma, nor karma that is neither wholesome nor unwholesome. It is the seven consciousnesses that have afflictions and defilement and can create wholesome and unwholesome karma; thus, when the seven consciousnesses are afflicted, the karma they create is defiled karma. After the tathāgatagarbha stores the wholesome and unwholesome karma created by the seven consciousnesses, it contains and stores defiled karmic seeds.