‘If they are simply consciousness; in the absence of external objects how can a consciousness bearing their aspects arise?’ To this they say:
It is just like the waves that will appear
Upon the ocean as by wind it’s stirred,
When from the substrate, seed of all, appears
Just consciousness by self-potential spurred. (6.46)
When a stretch of water in the ocean, the supporter of waves, is agitated by the wind, through the conditioning wind’s stirrings one can discern the movements of rising waves previously dormant, as if they are competing to assume a physical identity.
Similarly, the continuum of consciousness has been ongoing since beginningless time, and as tendencies for grasping at subject and object ripen things assume particular identities. When these cease they leave particular imprints in the substrate consciousness that serve as causes for later occurrences of consciousnesses with similar features. Eventually the conditions for them to ripen stir, and they reach ripening. It is in relation to these impure merely dependent occurrences that immature beings then impute concepts of subject and object where there are in fact no objects whatsoever apart from consciousness.
As the proponents of an almighty god (īśvara) and so forth will say:
Just as the spider is the cause of the spiderweb,
The water-crystal is for water,
And the fig-tree for its branches,
He is the cause for all things embodied.1
Just as those who profess such things as an almighty god as the creator of the world, the proponents of a substrate consciousness claim that the substrate consciousness is the omnific source (sarvabījaka), since it is the fundamental seed of all things perceived. The only difference between them is that the almighty god is said to be permanent while the substrate consciousness is impermanent.
Title
Chapter 1: Pramuditā
