The Mental Activities of the Manas in Acting

Question: When a film actor plays a villain or a bad person and performs very convincingly, deeply immersed in the role, how does the tathāgatagarbha record the actor's karmic actions at such times? What are the karmic seeds like?

Answer: Acting is also called pretending; the mental activity is not genuinely so. What is meant by acting and pretending is that the mind consciousness decides how things should be done, which is not consistent with the intentions of the manas. The behavior is the mind consciousness's fabrication, where the mind consciousness tries its best to genuinely display mental activity that the manas does not possess, making people feel that it seems real, as if it were truly happening.

There is an enormous difference between karmic actions that the mind consciousness subjectively manifests and karmic actions that the manas dominates and controls; the karmic seeds stored are different, and the retributive results are therefore different. It is like a child in a family doing bad things versus the parents doing bad things: the nature is different, and the punishment and discipline received are different. The child receives light discipline, while the parents receive heavy punishment.

However, when the child is disciplined, it will certainly implicate the parents, requiring the parents to accept punishment on the child's behalf. Karmic actions created subjectively by the mind consciousness are light, but the punishment will also fall upon the manas. When the manas creates karma of its own accord, the punishment falls entirely upon the manas itself—the parents must bear all responsibility. But what the parents should receive will also be specifically borne by the child, or borne on their behalf, because the parents are honored; likewise, the manas's retributive results will also be specifically borne on its behalf by the six consciousnesses, because the manas, as the master, is honored.

What karmic seeds are stored when karma is created, and what retributive results will be received in the future, depend entirely on the mental activity of the manas, or take the manas's mental activity as primary. In acting, it is the mind consciousness that performs, pretending to be a bad person doing bad things; the manas is not bad, so in essence it is not bad, and no seeds of unwholesome karma can be stored. If the manas becomes moved during the performance, giving rise to mental activity identical to that in the play, then it no longer counts as acting—it is pure karma creation, and the karmic seeds are recorded as they truly are. If the manas is not moved and it is only the mind consciousness pretending, there are still karmic seeds, and all behavior and actions must also be recorded. But the nature of the karmic seeds is different; what kind of karmic seeds and retributive results there are is determined entirely by the manas's mental activity.

If, during the performance, the mind consciousness does not act well and the portrayal is unconvincing, it shows that the mind consciousness's skill is not good enough, that the mind consciousness does not quite resonate with the villain role, and it also shows that the manas is not bad and has not been tainted and corrupted by conditioning the mind consciousness, so it has no choice but to laboriously pretend to be a bad person, with an insufficiently good performance. But even if the manas is a very good person, if the mind consciousness's acting skills are superb—knowing how to act and how to pretend—then immersion in the role will be quick and deep. The karmic seeds stored are still those of acting and pretending, not the karmic seeds of a bad manas, so the retributive results are not bad. However, if one pretends to be a bad person for a long time, it will also subtly condition the manas, making the manas unknowingly familiar with badness and adapted to badness, and it is possible that at some point it will act badly once.

By the same token, it can be proven that in the process of cultivating and realizing the Buddha's Dharma, if only the mind consciousness realizes the fruits while the manas does not, it is a false realization, not a true one—roughly equivalent to acting. Seeds are still stored, but the wholesome results are slight. True realization is realization led by the manas. Once the master has realized the fruits, what is there left to say about the subordinates? They follow the master in receiving the retributive results and enjoying the fruit-positions. There has never been a case where the manas, the master, has not realized the fruits, yet the subordinate mind consciousness alone can realize the fruits and enjoy the fruit-positions. Could it be that the servant can stand above the master, holding a position higher than the master, the guest usurping the host's role? There is no such principle.