commentary HERE

Please explain: "The six classes of sentient beings with their various delusions, the kaya of the victorious one, the appearance of wisdom, and the different vehicles, including the nine levels, are not established on the Base by virtue of existing in the way of entities."

What that sentence is doing is protecting the Base from being turned into a kind of metaphysical container filled with really existing things 🌿

In plainer English, it means:

The six realms of beings, their delusions, the Buddha’s kāyas, wisdom-appearances, and even the nine vehicles do indeed appear, function, and get talked about — but they are not established on the Base as independently real entities. They are not things that sit on top of the Base the way objects sit on a table. Wilkinson explicitly says the text is very careful not to let the Base be reified, and that it is beyond the four extremes of existence, non-existence, both, and neither.

So the sentence is making a two-part move.

First, it is not denying appearance. The text absolutely speaks about sentient beings, delusion, the three kāyas, wisdom, and the nine vehicles. Wilkinson even notes that the PBD spends ten chapters discussing the nine vehicles in detail. It also says that appropriate appearances arise for the six classes of sentient beings, and that Nirmanakāya manifests in forms suited to them.

Second, it is denying that these are ultimately established as entities. In the highest view, they are not grounded as self-existing “things.” Wilkinson quotes the text as saying that the essential Dharmakāya of awareness is without saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, without Base, path, and result, without vehicles and individuals, without the six classes of sentient beings, and even that there is not the path or the vehicles, nor the nine vehicles, cause and result, outer and inner.

So when the sentence says “not established on the Base by virtue of existing in the way of entities,” it means something like this:

These distinctions are valid as appearances, designations, modes of manifestation, or pedagogical differentiations, but not as ultimately real building blocks of reality. They arise within display, recognition, delusion, and teaching — but they are not separately grounded substances.

You could unfold the line piece by piece like this:

The six classes of sentient beings with their various delusions are not ultimately real kinds of beings from the side of the Base. They are designations bound up with delusion. Wilkinson quotes the text: “Samsara is merely designated through delusion.”

The kāya of the victorious one is also not an entity in the strict ultimate sense. The kāyas are spoken of, recognized, and manifested, but the highest view is beyond grasping even the three kāyas as real things. Wilkinson says the text is beyond even concepts such as Buddhahood, the three kāyas, the five wisdoms, and the nine vehicles.

The appearance of wisdom is not a separately existing object either. Wisdom appears, and the five wisdoms arise as luminescence, but they are proceedings from the same fundamental state, not entities added onto it.

The different vehicles, including the nine levels, are teaching distinctions. They matter conventionally and soteriologically, but they are not ultimately established from the standpoint of the Base. That is why the same text can discuss the vehicles at length and yet say that ultimately there are no vehicles and no nine vehicles.

So the deepest sense is:

The Base is not a substrate populated by really existing entities such as beings, defilements, Buddhas, wisdoms, or paths. Rather, all of these are appearances or differentiations that arise in relation to recognition and delusion, while the Base itself remains beyond reification.

A compact paraphrase would be:

“Beings, delusions, Buddhas, wisdom-manifestations, and vehicles all appear and can be spoken of, but from the standpoint of the Base none of them is ultimately grounded as a self-existing entity.”

And one more nuance: this is not nihilism. The text is not saying “none of this matters.” It is saying: do not mistake doctrinal distinctions or visionary manifestations for ultimately real furniture of the Absolute. That is very Dzogchen.

If you want, I can next rewrite that sentence in cleaner modern English, or try to reconstruct the likely Tibetan behind “existing in the way of entities.”