Are the Five Aggregates Inside the Eighth Consciousness or Outside?

The five aggregates are not inside the eighth consciousness—so are they outside the eighth consciousness? Where would "outside the eighth consciousness" even be? Which dharma is not the eighth consciousness? Does the eighth consciousness have an outside? What would be outside? Empty space? Even empty space is within the eighth consciousness. What dharma could be outside the eighth consciousness?

Which dharma can exist apart from the eighth consciousness? If it cannot be apart from the eighth consciousness, can it be outside? If dharmas outside could separate from the eighth consciousness, then what dharma could exist independently, detached from the eighth consciousness? The Śūraṅgama Sūtra says: all dharmas are things within the wondrous luminosity of the true mind.

Within the mind-substance of the eighth consciousness there is nothing... no-thing... yet all dharmas are nonetheless never apart from the eighth consciousness, nor are they adjacent to it. The eighth consciousness is called the one true dharma realm, and all dharmas exist within this one true dharma realm. They are not inside the mind-substance; the mind-substance is empty, possessing nothing at all, as the Heart Sutra states.