The Fifth Patriarch's Verse on Dharma Transmission

The Fifth Patriarch's dharma-transmission gāthā: 有情来下种，因地果还生；无情亦无种，无性亦无生。

Explanation: Sentient beings (sattva) refer to living beings. Sentient beings possess the eighth consciousness, have the five aggregates or four aggregates, have the activity of the conscious mind, have a lifespan, and are living beings. Insentient things lack the eighth consciousness, lack the seven consciousnesses, lack the five aggregates, have no discriminating activity of the conscious mind, and are not sentient beings. The "ground of causation" (因地) refers to the fact that only because there is the mind-ground of the eighth consciousness can fruits be harvested. When the seed of the Dharma is planted in sentient beings, these seeds are stored by the eighth consciousness; in the future, when the conditions ripen, the eighth consciousness outputs the seeds, and the karmic retribution comes to fruition. Planting seeds in insentient things is useless, because insentient things have no conscious mind to receive and accept them, nor an eighth consciousness to store the seeds of the Dharma, so they can never blossom and bear fruit. All dharmas, whether sentient or insentient, because they inherently lack self-nature, cannot give birth to themselves; all must arise and manifest through the eighth consciousness in dependence on various conditions.