The Information Discerned by the Five Consciousnesses Is Directly Conveyed to the Manas

Is the information discerned by the five consciousnesses transmitted directly to the manas, or to the mind consciousness? It is transmitted directly to the manas, not to the mind consciousness. Because the manas is the determining consciousness of the five aggregates and the six consciousnesses, directly governing the arising, ceasing, and transformation of the six consciousnesses, whereas the mind consciousness is not the determining consciousness and cannot decide the arising, ceasing, and transformation of the five aggregates and the five consciousnesses. Moreover, the mind consciousness and the five consciousnesses are consciousness-minds that stand parallel and coordinate with one another; the five sense objects and mental objects (dharmas) they discern are parallel and coordinate dharmas, which together constitute the realm of the six sense objects—without any one of the five sense objects or the mental object, the six sense objects cannot be formed. Therefore, the five sense objects discerned by the five consciousnesses are transmitted directly to the manas, and at the same time the mental objects discerned by the mind consciousness are also transmitted to the manas together with the five consciousnesses; only then can the manas know how the material form is, know how the sound object is, know how the taste object is—otherwise it could not know any kind of sense-object realm at all.

After the manas receives the information transmitted by the five consciousnesses and the mind consciousness, it carries out its own deliberation, consideration, weighing, and choosing, and then makes a decision on how to handle things in the next step; then the six consciousnesses will arise again upon the sense-object realm that the manas wishes to deal with, and there is also a distinction of primary and secondary among them, as well as a distinction of heavier and lighter in what is discerned.