Are Defiled Seeds Transformed or Eliminated?

The seeds of karmic formations are subject to arising, abiding, alteration, and cessation, and cannot be converted into one another. Although it is said that the wholesome and the unwholesome wax and wane in mutual opposition, the seeds of wholesome and unwholesome karma likewise cannot be converted into one another. Defiled seeds are the karmic seeds left behind by defiled karmic formations created with a defiled mind. When such a seed ripens and bears its fruit, sentient beings will undergo evil retribution, and once the retribution is exhausted, the seed is eliminated. If one repents of defiled karma, then after the mind is transformed to purity, the defiled seeds will also be eliminated, so that in future lives one will not undergo evil retribution, or will undergo less of it. Therefore, defiled seeds are eliminated, not converted. If ignorance is gradually extinguished, the mind will become increasingly pure, luminosity will gradually increase, and the defiled seeds that are eliminated will grow ever more numerous, until they are completely extinguished and the mind is ultimately pure without remainder—then one becomes a Buddha. As ignorance grows ever thinner and luminosity ever greater, the phenomena of the mind being defiled also become fewer and fewer, and pure wholesome karma will grow ever more abundant, until in the end there is only pure karma and pure seeds, with no defiled karma and no defiled seeds.

Some say that the tathāgatagarbha has both defilement and purity, and that this is why there is the teaching of "transforming consciousness into wisdom." But in actuality, the essential substance of the tathāgatagarbha is a pure consciousness; it is only because it contains and stores the defiled karmic seeds created by the seven consciousnesses that the tathāgatagarbha is neither defiled nor pure (na saṃkleśo na vyavadānam). If the tathāgatagarbha did not store the defiled karmic seeds of the seven consciousnesses, the tathāgatagarbha would be the pure undefiled consciousness (amala-vijñāna). If the tathāgatagarbha had defilement, it would have afflictions and defiled karma; yet the tathāgatagarbha does not create any wholesome or unwholesome karma, nor karma that is neither wholesome nor unwholesome. It is the seven consciousnesses that have afflictions and defilement and are capable of creating wholesome and unwholesome karma. Thus, when the seven consciousnesses are afflicted, the karma they create is defiled karma. After the tathāgatagarbha stores away the wholesome and unwholesome karma created by the seven consciousnesses, it contains and stores defiled karmic seeds.