Are There Secret Matters in the World?

Everyone's tathāgatagarbha is truly remarkable; its functions and characteristics are beyond imagination. Sentient beings with insufficient wisdom find it difficult to understand the secret workings of the tathāgatagarbha, difficult to understand its sustaining and upholding function with respect to all dharmas. Therefore it is said that the tathāgatagarbha has unknowing upholding and acceptance (parigraha). When one's wisdom becomes deeper and broader, one will gradually come to know the various upholding functions of the tathāgatagarbha, and then one can no longer say that the tathāgatagarbha's upholding is unknowable. Knowing or not knowing depends on each person's cultivation and wisdom.

At all times the tathāgatagarbha is transforming, manifesting, and upholding all dharmas pertaining to the five-aggregate body, as well as the living environment of the five-aggregate body and the realms of the six sense objects. Not even the smallest matter concerning the five-aggregate body escapes Him; He knows it all and records it, and in the future there will be karmic retribution. For example, when someone secretly curses and slanders another person without the other party knowing, the tathāgatagarbhas of both people will make a record. When they meet in the future, they will inexplicably feel estranged toward each other in their hearts, and one will repay the other. Although the five aggregates of the person being cursed do not know about this matter, his tathāgatagarbha knows it, and so it will be archived.

Why can that person's tathāgatagarbha know about it? Because everyone's tathāgatagarbha has the same nature and belongs to the same kind, and it pervades all times, all places, all realms, and all stages. That is to say, the tathāgatagarbha pervades all times—past, future, and present; pervades the six sense-faculty bases and the six sense-object bases; pervades the six consciousness realms; and also pervades the desire realm, the form realm, and the formless realm, pervading the worlds of the ten directions. Since this is so, as long as something is related to the five aggregates that He upholds, the tathāgatagarbha will have a resonance with it and will know it. Moreover, between tathāgatagarbhas there is also a relationship of mutual coordination and cooperation.

Everything one does is recorded by one's own tathāgatagarbha, and everything related to oneself is also collected and archived by one's own tathāgatagarbha. Therefore, the manas, relying on the discernment of the tathāgatagarbha, knows everything related to oneself, and will alert the mind consciousness that something special is about to happen. Because the tathāgatagarbha knows about future events—though not their specific contents—it will hint at certain things so that the five aggregates become alert.

When two people whisper together, gossiping about others' conflicts and disputes, the tathāgatagarbhas of both will record it, and the tathāgatagarbha of a third person will also perceive it and make a record at the same time. Then the third person's manas will have some perception based on his own tathāgatagarbha, and will alert his mind consciousness; the mind consciousness will then know something is up. But not knowing the specific matter, the feeling in his heart is strange; upon seeing those two people he feels somewhat uneasy, and those two people, upon seeing this person, also feel somewhat uneasy. Therefore, in this world there are truly no secrets at all.

The tathāgatagarbha also upholds the retributive environment in which the five aggregates live—the realms of the six sense objects. If the realms of the six sense objects belong to one's own five aggregates, the tathāgatagarbha upholds them; if the retributive environment has no karmic connection with the five-aggregate body, the tathāgatagarbha cannot uphold it directly, and it must be upheld jointly by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings with shared karma. For example, a person raises a potted flower and it thrives; if it is given to another person, once the flower arrives at the other person's home, it does not grow well and may gradually wither or even die. This is related to sentient beings' retributive environment. Some orchards and fruit trees, or animals, thrive under one person's care and feeding; when another person takes over, the animals or fruit trees decline, change, or die—all of these are karmic conditions. Under the care of an owner with whom it has karmic connection, an animal lives well; with an owner with whom it has no connection or only a shallow connection, it lives poorly and may even die. Organ transplantation follows the same principle: an organ upheld by another person's tathāgatagarbha, once placed in one's own body, will gradually come to be upheld solely by one's own tathāgatagarbha. If the karmic connection between two people is poor and the manas rejects it, the two tathāgatagarbhas will not cooperate and hand over well, and the transplant will not succeed.