Three Kinds of Consciousness, and Seven Kinds of Own-Nature

The commentary opens this passage by pointedly distinguishing this sūtra's own scheme of consciousness from what it calls 常途所立諸識, the consciousness-scheme "commonly established" elsewhere: a ninth, utterly pure consciousness (菴摩羅識) belonging to a buddha, an eighth storehouse consciousness (阿黎耶識) belonging to bodhisattvas, a seventh transmitting consciousness (阿陀那識) belonging to the two vehicles, and a sixth discriminating consciousness, also called the "wave consciousness" (波浪識), belonging to ordinary beings — with some translators, they note, declining to posit a separate ninth consciousness at all, treating it as merely another name for the eighth. This sūtra's own eightfold count, they specify, runs differently: it names the tathāgatagarbha itself as "the storehouse consciousness" (如來藏名識藏), then adds manas, the discriminating consciousness, and the five sense-consciousnesses, for eight in total — a difference in scheme, they stress, not a disagreement about how many consciousnesses actually exist. On "true" replacing the more familiar "manifesting" in the three-aspect list (轉相、業相、真相), the commentary cross-references the Awakening of Faith's own triad of karmic, perceiving, and manifesting marks directly, then explains the substitution: 此不言現而言真者，蓋言此識隨緣不變，故名真耳 — this passage says "true" rather than "manifesting" because it is emphasizing that this aspect of consciousness follows conditions without itself changing, and it is that unchanging quality specifically that earns it the name "true."

On the mirror analogy for the manifesting consciousness, the commentary is precise about what work the image is doing: 現識是能生諸法之本，造因招果，如鏡之照物，妍醜不差也 — the manifesting consciousness is the root capable of giving rise to every dharma; it generates causes that summon their effects, exactly as a mirror reflects whatever stands before it without altering whether the reflected thing is beautiful or ugly. The mirror does not select, embellish, or distort what it shows; it simply manifests, faithfully, whatever conditions present to it — which is precisely why "inconceivable habituation and inconceivable transformation" can serve as its cause without any additional machinery of intention or choice.

Zongle and Ruqi single out this analogy for a claim they make nowhere else with this force: 此喻明轉識與藏識非異非不異，正顯藏識真相不滅，以為一經之要，所謂佛語心者，其在是歟 — this analogy clarifies that the transforming consciousness and the storehouse consciousness are neither different nor not different, and it directly reveals that the storehouse consciousness's own truly real aspect does not cease; it is nothing less than the essential point of the entire sūtra — is not this exactly what is meant by "the mind that every buddha teaches," the very phrase the sūtra's title-chapter is named for? They then work the analogy in both directions with care: the lump of clay stands for the transforming consciousness, the fine dust for the storehouse consciousness — the storehouse consciousness is what is true, the transforming consciousness what is provisional. Because the lump is formed from the dust and shares the dust's own substance, the two cannot be called "different"; but because a lump that were strictly identical with its dust would leave nothing to distinguish "clay" from "dust" in the first place, they cannot be called "not different" either. This, the commentary concludes, is precisely the image for how the false arises from the true, and how, when the false subsides, the true is what remains visible — with the gold-and-ornament pairing offered immediately afterward as the identical logic in a second material.

On why the storehouse consciousness cannot simply cease along with the transforming consciousness — the point the tīrthikas' theory gets wrong — the commentary explains what is really at stake using the language of the two extreme views directly: if the storehouse consciousness's essence changed the moment the wind of ignorance stirred it, that would fall into eternalism's mirror-opposite, since the storehouse consciousness is precisely what serves as the seed for both wholesome and unwholesome results and so must be capable of following conditions; but if the storehouse consciousness ceased the instant the transforming consciousness ceased, that would fall into the tīrthikas' own view of annihilation. 眾生自性清淨心因無明風動，心與無明俱無形相，不相捨離 — a sentient being's own intrinsically pure mind is stirred by the wind of ignorance; mind and ignorance, both formless, never separate from one another — and yet 心非動性, mind's own nature is not itself the moving; so that when ignorance itself finally ceases, only the resulting continuity ceases, while the underlying capacity for wisdom is never in fact damaged. This is, the commentary notes, the whole sūtra's answer to the tīrthikas' error in one sentence: they mistake the wave's cessation for the ocean's.

The commentary flags, and then rejects, an easy misreading of the seven-kinds-of-own-nature list: 或約妄釋是凡非聖，恐非經意 — some interpret this list as describing the deluded, ordinary person's own-nature rather than the sage's, but this is probably not what the sūtra means. Their evidence is textual and immediate: the very next paragraph calls this "性自性第一義心" the mind possessed by every tathāgata past, present, and future, and later states outright that "凡夫無性自性" — the ordinary person lacks own-nature-of-nature altogether. If lacking it is precisely what marks an ordinary person, the term itself must denote the sage's attainment, not the unenlightened condition; so the commentary reads all seven kinds accordingly, sorting the first six into cause and effect (the own-nature of accumulation as the cause built from every wholesome accumulation, own-nature and characteristic as its internal and external aspects, the own-nature of the great elements as the sage's own resultant embodiment) with the seventh, accomplishment, identified directly with the "first-principle mind" the passage names a few lines later.

On the seven kinds of ultimate reality, the commentary distinguishes which are shared and which belong to the Buddha alone: 前六種通於菩薩及佛自到境界，第七種唯屬於佛 — the first six domains are common to both bodhisattvas and the Buddha's own domain of self-arrival, while the seventh belongs to the Buddha exclusively. It then traces the sequence as a single chain of development rather than seven unrelated items: 心能發慧，慧力既勝則成智用，智用既成則正見現前，正見現前則超斷常二見，乃至超越菩薩境界，至如來自到境界也 — mind gives rise to insight; once the strength of insight prevails it becomes the function of wisdom; once wisdom's function is accomplished, right view stands directly before one; once right view stands before one, the two views of annihilation and eternalism are transcended — and from there, transcending even the bodhisattva's own domain, one arrives at the domain the Tathāgata reaches on his own. Each of the seven names not a separate state but the next rung of a single ladder, which is why the passage can close, without contradiction, by naming this same "first-principle mind" both the highest attainment and — via the interlinear gloss distinguishing *hṛdaya* from *citta* — a plain, unglamorous word for "mind" in the most ordinary sense: the heartwood of a tree, not a flicker of thought.