The Dharma of Ordinary Beings and the Dharma of Sages

具足凡夫法，凡夫不知，凡夫若知，即成圣人。具足圣人法，圣人不知，圣人若知，即是凡夫。

The tathāgatagarbha is inherently endowed with all dharmas, and these dharmas include conditioned dharmas and unconditioned dharmas, dharmas of ordinary beings and dharmas of sages. The conditioned dharmas are the worldly dharmas of the three realms fabricated by the seven consciousnesses; they are the five aggregates and eighteen realms produced by the tathāgatagarbha. The unconditioned dharmas are the purity and suchness displayed when the tathāgatagarbha operates within the body of the five aggregates, and they also represent the mind-dharma of the tathāgatagarbha.

The tathāgatagarbha is endowed with all worldly dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms, yet ordinary beings do not know this, because the seven consciousnesses have ignorance that obscures their own mind, taking the dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms as truly existent dharmas, not knowing that all these dharmas are illusorily manifested by the tathāgatagarbha. When sentient beings of the ordinary kind cultivate and study the Mahāyāna dharma, once they realize the tathāgatagarbha, they then know that all worldly dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms belong to the dharmas within the tathāgatagarbha, that the tathāgatagarbha is inherently endowed with the seeds of all dharmas, and that when the conditions are complete, it will give rise to all dharmas in accordance with those seeds; the self of the five aggregates is something illusorily projected, and therefore is not-self. At that point, this person transforms from an ordinary being into a sage. When the Fifth Patriarch expounded the Diamond Sutra, the Sixth Patriarch, because he understood the principle that self-nature is inherently endowed with all dharmas and comprehended the five "how unforeseen is self-nature (svabhāva)" statements, became a sage.

The tathāgatagarbha is a transcendent dharma, without ignorance and afflictions; therefore it is endowed with sagehood, endowed with the dharmas of sages, endowed with unconditioned dharmas. Throughout beginningless kalpas, His own mind has always been pure and unconditioned, without a trace of ignorance, without a trace of affliction, without a trace of self-nature; He gives rise to all dharmas yet does not cling to any dharma, and in the operation of all dharmas He always displays the purity, suchness, absence of afflictions, and absence of ignorance of His own substance, never turning along with the myriad sense objects. Yet the sagehood inherently possessed by the substance of the tathāgatagarbha—He never knows it Himself, nor does He know whether He is ordinary or sage, conditioned or unconditioned.

If one could know that the tathāgatagarbha is endowed with the pure and unconditioned dharmas of sages, and know the true and such nature of the tathāgatagarbha, this knowing mind would be a deluded mind endowed with conditionedness; the deluded mind is precisely worldly dharma, and worldly dharma is the ordinary, while the transcendent tathāgatagarbha is the sage. If someone says that the tathāgatagarbha knows that He Himself is endowed with pure and unconditioned nature, the tathāgatagarbha would immediately become a worldly, arising-and-ceasing deluded mind, becoming an ordinary being, no longer the transcendent mind-substance of the tathāgatagarbha. However, the tathāgatagarbha never has this kind of knowing nature; He is forever the so-called transcendent sage, and therefore He is endowed with the dharmas of sages without knowing it Himself.