What Are the Four Aspects of Tathāgatagarbha?

The perceiving-aspect (darśana-bhāga) of the tathāgatagarbha is the discerning nature toward sentient beings' faculties, physical body, and material environment. The tathāgatagarbha can know the mental factors of attention (manaskāra) and deliberation (manasikāra) of the manas, the seventh consciousness; after knowing them, it cooperates with the manas to manifest the myriad phenomena of the threefold world. Therefore, without the manas, the tathāgatagarbha cannot operate to give rise to all dharmas. The perceiving-aspect of the tathāgatagarbha is also manifested in its ability to discern sentient beings' faculties, physical body, material environment, and karmic seeds. The tathāgatagarbha has an extremely great number of perceiving-aspects; apart from not perceiving the specific six sense objects, everything else is within His perception. The object-aspect (nimitta) of the tathāgatagarbha includes the outer six sense objects and the inner six sense objects, as well as sentient beings' five-aggregate bodies, the universe's material world, and the seven consciousnesses.

The self-cognition (svasaṃvitti) of the tathāgatagarbha means that the tathāgatagarbha can personally validate the objects it discerns; that is, after the tathāgatagarbha's perceiving-aspect discerns the manas and the faculties, physical body, and material environment, the tathāgatagarbha has a knowing, and this knowing is the self-cognition. Therefore, the tathāgatagarbha has knowing: toward the six sense objects it is without awareness and without knowing, but toward all other dharmas, it can know them all. As for the self-validating cognition (svasaṃvedana) of the tathāgatagarbha, when observed through the direct realization wisdom of bodhisattvas who have attained the bhūmis, the tathāgatagarbha can know and verify that it has already known the mental activities of the manas, has already discerned the faculties, physical body, and material environment, and has already discerned the karmic seeds. That is to say, the tathāgatagarbha can introspect on its own operating state and can introspect on what it is currently doing—this is the self-validating cognition of the tathāgatagarbha.

The tathāgatagarbha still has awareness and knowing with respect to the six sense objects; it is only that the manner, method, and content of its awareness and knowing are not the same as those of the seven consciousnesses. The mind consciousness cannot know what the tathāgatagarbha's kind of awareness, knowing, and content are actually like, because the faculties, physical body, and material environment also belong to the six sense objects.