宗鏡錄 50.23

50.23

Answer: This consciousness establishes the sentient and the insentient, and gives rise to defiled dharmas and pure dharmas. If there is awareness and sensation, then the realm of sentient beings arises; if there is no thought and no deliberation, then the conditions of the physical world arise. Due to defiled dharmas, there is revolving through the six destinies; following pure dharmas, there are the progressive stages of the four kinds of noble ones. It can indeed be called the root of ordinary beings and sages, the origin of bodies and physical containers. If one understands the source of this consciousness, what dharma is not awakening? If one realizes this nature of mind, what objective realm is not real? It may be called the gate beyond learning, the dwelling place of the spirit. The Yogācārabhūmiśāstra says: "The ālayavijñāna is the root of all defilements. Why is this? Because this consciousness is the root of the arising of the world of sentient beings, being able to produce the various faculties, the support-bases of the faculties, the evolving consciousnesses, and so forth; it is also the root of the arising of the receptacle world, because it is able to generate the receptacle world; it is also the root of sentient beings' mutual arising, because all sentient beings, viewed in relation to one another, serve as sovereign conditions for each other. Why is this? There are no sentient beings who, when seeing one another and so forth, do not give rise to suffering, pleasure, and the like, experiencing one another. By this principle, you should know that the realm of sentient beings serves as sovereign conditions for one another. Furthermore, because this very ālayavijñāna can sustain the seeds of all dharmas, in the present world it is the substance of the truth of suffering, and it is also the generating cause of the truth of suffering in the future; it is also the generating cause of the truth of the origination [of suffering] in the present. Because it is able in this way to produce the world of sentient beings, because it is able to produce the receptacle world, up to the seeds of wholesome dharmas such as the aids to liberation (mokṣabhāgīya) and the aids to penetration (nirvedhabhāgīya) subsumed and sustained by the ālayavijñāna, as well as the eighteen dhātus such as the eye-consciousness." The sūtra says: "The simile of a cluster of akṣa fruits, because within the ālayavijñāna there are many dhātus."