[jonesboy]

From the Lankavatara Sutra.

http://buddhasutra.com/files/lankavatara_sutra.htm

The Blessed One replied: The three self-natures, the eightfold mind-system, and the twofold ego-less-ness are all included in the Five Dharmas. The self-natures of things, of ideas, and of the six-fold mind-system, correspond with the Dharmas of appearance, name and discrimination; the self-nature of Universal Mind and Reality corresponds to the Dharmas of right-knowledge and "Suchness."

By becoming attached to what is seen of the mind itself, there is an activity awakened which is perpetuated by habit-energy that becomes manifest in the mind-system, from the activities of the mind-system there rises the notion of an ego-soul and its belongings; the discriminations, attachments, and notion of an ego-soul, rising simultaneously like the sun and its rays of light.

By the ego-less-ness of things is meant that the elements that make up the aggregates of personality and its objective world being characterized by the nature of Maya and destitute of anything that can be called self-substance are therefore un-born and have no self-nature. How can things be said to have an ego-soul? By the ego-less-ness of persons is meant is that in the aggregates that make up personality there is no ego-substance, nor anything that is like an ego-substance nor that belongs to it. The mind-system, which is the most characteristic mark of personality, originated in ignorance, discrimination, desire, and deed; and its activities are perpetuated by perceiving, grasping, and becoming attached to objects as if they were real. The memory of these discriminations, desires, attachments and deeds is stored in Universal Mind since beginning-less time, and is still being accumulated where it conditions the appearance of personality and its environment and brings about constant change and destruction from moment to moment. The manifestations are like a river, a seed, a lamp, a cloud, the wind; Universal mind in its voraciousness to store up everything, is like a monkey never at rest, like a fly ever in search of food and without partiality, like a fire that is never satisfied, like a water-lifting machine that goes on rolling. Universal mind as defiled by habit-energy is like a magician that causes phantom things and people to appear and move about. A thorough understanding of these things is necessary to an understanding of the ego-less-ness of persons.