The Sixth Patriarch is saying that if the embracements function in an evil way, they will be those of common people, but if their function is in a good, right way, they will be the same as those of the Buddha. These embracements include the Six Consciousnesses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and sense-center consciousness; the Six Gates: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; and the Six Qualities: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, dharmas.” So the important thing is function. Storehouse consciousness includes both mind and body. Everything we see, hear, etc. is stored in alaya vijnana, storehouse consciousness. It’s a metaphysical term. (Alaya means “store” as in Himalaya. Hima means “snow.”) This alaya vijnana cannot be grasped. Nobody knows what shape it has, where it begins. It is the ground of all consciousness and subconsciousness, which means that, because of it, everything can be explained, everything exists, because of it. This store-consciousness is the basic reason for karma, and also for nirvana. It has both possibilities, expressed in the six consciousnesses. The sensecenter consciousness catches and corrects all senses. It is called the “sixth sense,” which is mind. Not mentioned in this text is the “seventh sense,” klista manas, which is tainted, habitual sense. An example is, as soon as you see a cookie, you don’t hesitate to pick it up and eat it. If there were just the six senses, and alaya vijnana, the hand wouldn’t move toward the cookie. Thinking is also affected by the seventh sense. It directs our activity and keeps our karma functioning, one action altering another, and another. This is called klista manas, meaning already colored, already directed sense. Our mind is already directed toward our favorite things, most interesting things. This is an explanation of habit, custom. Below this seventh sense is alaya vijnana, storehouse-consciousness. In this Section 45, we now understand that the Sixth Patriarch taught his disciples these traditional teachings, in addition to his new teachings. The important thing here is that these “embracements” are elements of our nature and they can be the contents of wisdom, or the contents of ignorance. Usually meditation and concentration reach to the understanding that there is alaya vijnana, and it becomes something you don’t, yourself, have. Rather, this person (you) is growing from the ground of alaya vijnana, like a tree. We see dharmas with our senses, but we don’t recognize there is ground. So I can say that the universe is huge, millions of dharmas, and a little dewdrop is reflecting it all. That is how we are seeing things. This is a simile of ourselves and store-consciousness. Usually store-consciousness is really dark. It has no light in it, so no one can understand who is who. Everything is sleeping in the darkness. When I visited a mental hospital, my sense of alaya vijnana was the same as theirs, but their seventh sense, klista manas, was extremely different, so normal people couldn’t understand them. Thus the feeling was, “That’s his problem.” This is how people encourage mental patients to go further and further in a different direction. This is how the seventh sense powerfully determines people’s lives, which direction they go. I was born in Japan. So even though I was interested in French, I couldn’t be a Frenchman! The transmitted qualities of our ancestors, their blood, their body structure, are also in the seventh sense. Our history is also in the seventh sense. It includes all cultural activity, the kind of car we drive, etc. When Hui-neng talks about “deliberation,” he means whatever occurs before you sense something. The Chinese characters for “deliberation” are “thinking, measuring.” So a perception can be erroneous, and frightening or not frightening, or correct, and frightening or not frightening. If it is a good smell, your body goes to it. When you are fond of it, you go toward it. If you’re not fond of it, you part from it very instinctively. In a famous analogy, you are walking in the mountains and see a rope about the same size as a snake. It’s dark, and everyone thinks it’s a snake. Sometimes you see a snake, but think it is a rope, so you don’t feel fear. The same store-consciousness can become wisdom and it can be worked as wisdom. In this sense, sentient beings and Buddha are not different. Even when they awake, nothing changes, except that they see the daylight shining on all the different forms, in different positions. In brightness, what we have instead of thinking and measuring, is wisdom. You see with wisdom, you taste with wisdom, you act with compassion. And yet you cannot find the whole figure of alaya vijnana. It has existed from what has been called, “beginningless beginning.” Because of it there are both delusion and nirvana. Sometimes you may see a waterfall from a far place and think you see a white cross hanging from the cliff. But constantly this “vijnana”, this consciousness, is flowing. You are looking at a cross, but a flowing waterfall is hanging there. There are several Sanskrit words for characters.