That is actually the 8th Consciousness, not the 7th
Consciousness.
However, illusional beings take the 8th Consciousness as SELF,
which is wrong. For example you remembered yesterday you did
something, and you think 'That was ME doing it!' Therefore you
believe in an eternal Self entity... When the 7th consciousness
disappears, then 8th consciousness will kind of lose its
function
The eighth consciousness would be
quite useless without the seventh consciousness. It would be
nothing more than a receptacle to take things out of and to put
things into. It is through the action of the seventh consciousness
that our self-identified karmic seeds are stored, and we are kept
moving from life to life in the realm of samsara.
In reality, the essence is beyond time and space, its nature is
True Suchness.
We now come to the last skandha,
consciousness. I have explained earlier that this is really the
eighth consciousness, and that it is the storehouse for the karmic
seeds planted by our perceptions, conceptions, and activations. But
as I have shown, these perceptions, conceptions, and activations
are themselves false and unreal, and thus the seeds that they
generate have no real existence. The eighth consciousness,
therefore, is really a storehouse of illusions. Nothing within it
is real.
The storehouse itself is none other than True Suchness,
Buddha-nature. It is itself Buddhahood.
Does this mean that we have already attained Buddhahood? If in fact
everything is an illusion, can't we assume that we have achieved
all that there is to achieve and that we can do whatever we like?
Can we not rob and kill with impunity? Are we not already Buddhas?
Is this the point of the sutra?
No, the sutra sets forth a path for us, it does not give us license
to do whatever we feel. We must try to free ourselves from
illusions, to understand our own minds, and to progress ever higher
in the practice. We must be responsible for our actions. We must
keep the precepts. We must practice samadhi to attain wisdom, and
we must achieve purity of mind. Tathagatagarbha will then be the
same as True Suchness. But until we reach the point where our mind
is truly undefiled, our Tathagatagarbha will continue to store the
karmic seeds of our actions, and we will continue to bear the
responsibility for this karma; and we will continue to have
perceptions that are rooted in illusion: of happiness, joy, love,
hatred, worry, indifference.
