Illuminating the Intent

The bodhisattva on the sixth level who abides or resides in the superior perfection of wisdom and meditates on suchness, using the very reasoning that led him to cognize ultimate reality without distortion and to see without superimposition of a subject-object duality, realizes suchness in terms of consciousness only.

This bodhisattva also realizes that mind and mental factors, given there is no external reality, are mere dependently originated entities with no correspondence to an external reality.

This bodhisattva has established, through reasoning to be presented below, that phenomena such as forms emerge from the maturation of inner habitual propensities.

If asked, “If all this is consciousness only and there is no external reality, how does mere mind possessing the aspect of such external reality come to arise?”

[Response:] Just as in the great ocean, source of waves, for example, when it is whipped and beaten hard by windstorm, what previously seemed calm as if sleeping gives way to waves that rise high one after another, as if competing with each other.

This above statement indicates that in much the same manner as those who assert God (Īśvara) and so on to be the creator of the world of beings, the proponents of foundation consciousness speak of it as the bearer of all the seeds, since it is the basis of all the entities that are perceived as objects of consciousness.