Sentient beings see sense objects only when they have ignorance.

When the six faculties contact the six sense objects, the eighth consciousness produces the six consciousnesses. The three—faculty, sense object, and consciousness—converge in contact, and the six consciousnesses discern the inner six sense objects; thus sentient beings come to know the content of the inner six sense objects, and the discriminating knowing is completed. What sentient beings know is the inner sense objects and inner object-aspects, not the outer sense objects and outer object-aspects; therefore the six sense objects that sentient beings know are false and illusory. The inner sense objects are illusory; the outer sense objects, relative to the inner ones, seem real, but they too are conjured forth by the eighth consciousness and are likewise illusory and unreal. What is truly real is the unborn and unceasing true mind—the tathāgatagarbha, the eighth consciousness. Apart from this, everything is false, all illusory, conjured and unreal.

Sentient beings can never come into contact with the outer sense objects; they all live within illusory appearances and false appearances—nothing more than diseased eyes gazing at flowers in the sky. Do the inner sense objects and outer sense objects exist or not? When sentient beings' eyes are diseased, they can see flowers in the sky; when sentient beings' mind-eye is afflicted with obstruction, they will see all marks as real and true. When sentient beings' minds are free of disease, they no longer see flowers in the sky, but only see the nature of the tathāgatagarbha. For example, our five aggregates have movement and activity; these false appearances cannot be excluded—they do exist—but this existence is false existence. These dharmas may not be experientially realized at present, but after attaining enlightenment, when various contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdoms arise, one will then be able to understand. This is a personally realized realm of direct perception; no matter how others explain it, one cannot experientially realize it, because this is not a matter of intellectual understanding—it must be personally verified through actual practice before it can be experientially realized. What is merely understood is unreliable and cannot resolve the problem of birth and death.