If the external objects which are transformed are unreal, how can the Vijnyana, the transformer, be real?  If you say the latter is really existent, but not the former,[FN#368] then (you assume that) the dreaming mind (which is compared with Alaya-vijnyana) is entirely different from the objects seen in the dream (which are compared with external objects).  If they are entirely different, you ought not to identify the dream with the things dreamed, nor to identify the things dreamed with the dream itself.  In other words, they ought to have separate existences. (And) when you awake your dream may disappear, but the things dreamed would remain.

[FN#368] A.  ’In the following sentences I refute it, making use of the simile of the dream.’

Again, if (you say) that the things dreamed are not identical with the dream, then they would be really existent things.  If the dream is not the same as the things dreamed, in what other form does it appear to you?  Therefore you must acknowledge that there is every reason to believe that both the dreaming mind and the things dreamed are equally unreal, and that nothing exists in reality, though it seems to you as if there were a seer, and a seen, in a dream.

Thus those Vijnyanas also would be unreal, because all of them are not self-existent realities, their existence being temporary, and dependent upon various conditions.

“There is nothing,” (the author of) Madhyamika-castra[FN#369] says, “that ever came into existence without direct and indirect causes.  Therefore there is anything that is not unreal in the world.”  He says again:  “Things produced through direct and indirect causes I declare to be the very things which are unreal.” (The author of) Craddhotdada-castra[FN#370] says:  “All things in the universe present themselves in different forms only on account of false ideas.  If separated from the (false) ideas and thoughts, no forms of those external objects exist.”  “All the physical forms (ascribed to Buddha),” says (the author of) a sutra,[FN#371] “are false and unreal.  The beings that transcend all forms are called Buddhas."[FN#372] Consequently you must acknowledge that mind as well as external objects are unreal.  This is the eternal truth of the Mahayana doctrine.  We are driven to the conclusion that unreality is the origin of life, if we trace it back according to this doctrine.

[FN#369] The principal textbook of the Madhyamika School, by Nagarjuna and Nilanetra, translated into Chinese (A.D. 409) by Kumarajiva.

[FN#370] A well-known Mahayana book ascribed to Acvaghosa, translated into Chinese by Paramartha.  There exists an English translation by D. Suzuki.

[FN#371] Vajracchedha-prajnya-paramita-sutra, of which there exist three Chinese translations.

[FN#372] A.  ’Similar passages are found in every book of the Mahayana Tripitaka.’