A Brief Discourse on the Nature of Mind Consciousness (64)

8. The height of a mountain and the depth of water — height and depth are shape-color (saṃsthāna-rūpa) and visible form; only with the manifest color (varṇa-rūpa) of the mountain's hue can the shape-color of the mountain's height be set off, and only with the shape-color of the mountain's height can the range of the mountain's coloring be framed. Only with the water's color can the visible form of the water's depth be set off, and only with the visible form of the water's depth can the volume of water be delimited. The five sense-object colors of manifest color and the mental sense-objects (dharma-viṣaya) of shape-color, visible form, and avijñapti-rūpa are tightly bound together and cannot be separated even for an instant. Otherwise, no color could exist or manifest. Therefore it is said that external sense-objects must necessarily include mental sense-objects; the six sense-objects must be complete — it cannot be that only the external five sense-objects exist while there is no mental sense-object. External five sense-objects without mental sense-objects do not exist; they are imagined. The claim that mental sense-objects are manifested at the supreme faculty (indriya) in the back of the head in accordance with the five sense-objects has no basis whatsoever and simply does not hold. External sense-objects must be the complete form of the six sense-objects. When the tathāgatagarbha initially creates and transforms them, it cannot create only manifest colors such as color alone — a vast expanse of color without shape or content. The world is not composed purely of colors. All kinds of objects have their shapes and characteristics; only thus is the material world rich and colorful. For example, when the tathāgatagarbha creates the five-aggregate body, it is impossible that it creates only the colors of the physical body, and then the mental sense-objects such as tallness, shortness, fatness, and thinness are separately created in someone else's supreme faculty. This is absolutely impossible — no matter how anyone fantasizes, they could never imagine such a form of humanity and sentient beings. Another example: the golden ground of the land of bliss (sukhāvatī) cannot have only golden color without hardness, vastness, and boundaries — otherwise, how could one walk upon the golden ground? The tathāgatagarbha manifests images like a mirror; the mirror is faithful to the original appearance of external forms. It is impossible that the original appearance lacks length, size, height, or girth, yet the tathāgatagarbha could arbitrarily project long, short, square, round, large, small, tall, fat, or thin images onto the mirror's surface — how would that be projected? Would the tathāgatagarbha still be manifesting images like a mirror?