All Dharmas Are Without Self and Without Self-Nature (sarva-dharma-anātman-niḥsvabhāva)

The spring rain falls continuously, moistening all things silently and imperceptibly. This is a perception of the spring rain, and people take this feeling and knowing faculty as the self, taking the perceived objects as belonging to the self, feeling that both the self and what belongs to the self are very real and substantial. They then grasp and cling to these perceptive faculties, and for the sake of these perceptions they create various bodily, verbal, and mental karmic actions; the karmic seeds are thus stored in the tathāgatagarbha. When the karmic seeds ripen, the tathāgatagarbha delivers them forth, and the one who created the karma thereby receives the retributive results—wholesome, unwholesome, or neither wholesome nor unwholesome. The cause lies in taking these perceptions as real, as the self and as possessions of the self, and thereby grasping at, craving, and loathing the people, things, and events perceived, and creating karmic formations for the sake of those perceptions. All karmic formations exist because of the self, arising from the self; hence it is said that where there is a self, offense arises.

Are the people, things, and events we perceive real? Can they be possessed by us? Let us analyze this. For example, the raindrops we see in the spring rain are composed of the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind, and are produced by the tathāgatagarbha; the sound of raindrops striking the ground is also a sound-object composed of the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind, generated by the tathāgatagarbha. These external material sense-objects and sound-objects are not generated by one person's tathāgatagarbha alone, but are jointly generated by the tathāgatagarbhas of beings who share common karma. The sound of raindrops striking the ground has an extremely complex process of generation: the arising of sound is related to the movement of matter, and the movement of matter is related to the transformations of the four great elements.

When matter collides, sound is produced; when matter moves, collisions occur. The four great seeds arise, cease, and mutate, causing minute particles to move ceaselessly, and thus matter moves. Therefore it is said that all phenomena whatsoever are the functional operations of the tathāgatagarbha.

Sounds are divided into many kinds. The Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra, in its first fascicle, offers a classificatory description: there are sounds held and sustained by one's own tathāgatagarbha alone, such as the voice of speaking, coughing, breathing, and sounds emitted by the internal organs; and there are sounds produced by the friction and contact of the body with external matter, such as the sound of walking, the sound of picking things up, the sound of putting on clothes, the sound of the body striking against objects, and so on—sounds emitted through the interaction of one's own tathāgatagarbha with external matter. As for the other sounds of nature in the universe, the celestial music of the cosmos, these are conjured up and jointly sustained by the tathāgatagarbhas of beings who share common karma.

There is much more to the content of sound; sound has many attributes, and its categorization is difficult to delineate and very complex. All of these are functions of the tathāgatagarbha; the vast majority are the result of the joint sustaining and operating of all the tathāgatagarbhas of beings who share common karma, and all are produced from the arising, ceasing, and transformation of the four great elements of earth, water, fire, and wind.

When the material sense-objects, sound-objects, and mental sense-objects contact the eye faculty, ear faculty, and manas, the tathāgatagarbha generates the eye consciousness, ear consciousness, and mind consciousness, and then there is perception of the raindrops and the sound-objects of the raindrops striking the ground, followed by feelings. The material sense-objects, sound-objects, and mental sense-objects are born of the tathāgatagarbha; the eye faculty, ear faculty, and manas are born of the tathāgatagarbha; the eye consciousness, ear consciousness, and mind consciousness are born of the tathāgatagarbha. All of these are illusory; no dharma possesses autonomy of its own; none is the self, nor belongs to the self; fundamentally all are without self.

Observing to the very end, we will discover that everywhere there are the functional operations of the tathāgatagarbha. Where is there any true reality of the five aggregates themselves? There is none at all. Therefore, within any dharma there is no self, and none of it belongs to the self; the whole of it is precisely suchness. No one can ever find a single thing, a single dharma, that is not the functional operation of the tathāgatagarbha's seven great seeds; all are the workings of the tathāgatagarbha, and all must be credited to the tathāgatagarbha. The seven consciousnesses must also rely on the tathāgatagarbha to extensively create the manifold karmic deeds; the tathāgatagarbha never discriminates, nor does it refuse—responding to every request, it is said to "respond to a thousand prayers in a thousand places." "Wonderful Sound Avalokiteśvara" refers precisely to the tathāgatagarbha: wherever there is an affair, He goes there; He is also called "neither coming nor going."

The inner scent-objects and inner taste-objects are manifested and sustained by one's own tathāgatagarbha alone; the outer taste-objects and outer scent-objects are jointly manifested and sustained by the tathāgatagarbhas of beings who share common karma, and here too there are many complex factors. The inner tangible-objects are manifested and sustained by one's own tathāgatagarbha alone; the outer tangible-objects are jointly sustained and manifested by the tathāgatagarbhas of beings who share common karma, and this too is very complex. By the same principle, the inner material sense-objects and inner mental sense-objects are manifested by the tathāgatagarbha alone, while the outer material sense-objects and outer mental sense-objects are jointly manifested by the tathāgatagarbhas of beings who share common karma. The six faculties, six sense-objects, and six consciousnesses are all illusory appearances, none of them real; all are born of the tathāgatagarbha, just like the conjured sounds of wind and rain—passing by and unable to remain.

The sounds we hear now are in fact sounds that have already passed. By the time a sound is emitted and reaches our ear faculty, a period of time has already elapsed; when the tathāgatagarbha then manifests the consciousness-mind to discern it, another period of time has passed; and when a response is made in reply, still another period of time has passed. The discriminating responses of the consciousness-mind at the other five faculties are likewise all dealing with sense-objects of the past—there is no present moment. Therefore, everything we do is in the past tense, never the present moment. Hence it is said that all dharmas lack self-nature, all are the functional operations of the tathāgatagarbha, and none of them is the self.