The Five External Sense Objects Do Not Exist Without the Dharma Object

Mountains being high and waters being deep—height and depth are shape-marks and visible gestures (saṃsthāna-rūpa). Only with the manifest color (varṇa-rūpa) of the mountain's hue can the shape-mark of the mountain's height be set off, and only with the shape-mark of the mountain's height can the range of the mountain's colors be framed. Only with the water's color can the visible gesture of the water's depth be set off, and only with the visible gesture of the water's depth can the volume of water be delimited. The five sense-object colors of manifest color and the dharma-objects of shape-mark, visible gesture, and non-visible form are tightly bound together, and cannot be separated even for an instant. Otherwise, none of these colors could exist or manifest. Therefore, external sense objects must necessarily include dharma-objects; the marks of the six sense objects must be complete. It cannot be that only the five external sense objects exist while there is no dharma-object—five external sense objects without dharma-objects do not exist; they are merely imagined.

The claim that dharma-objects are transformed and manifested in the supreme faculty (indriya) at 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 set of six sense-object marks. When the tathāgatagarbha initially creates and transforms them, it cannot transform only manifest colors such as hues, producing 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 for it to create only the colors of the physical body, and then have dharma-objects such as tallness, shortness, fatness, or thinness be separately created in someone else's supreme faculty. This is absolutely impossible—no matter how anyone fantasizes, no one could imagine such a form of humanity and sentient beings.