Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (74)

The Six Faculties Condition the Six Sense Objects to Give Rise to the Six Consciousnesses

The six faculties each condition their respective sense objects: the eye faculty confronts material form, the ear faculty confronts sounds, the nose faculty confronts odors, the tongue faculty confronts flavors, the body faculty confronts tangibles, and the manas confronts mental objects (dharmas). The mental object is a form subsumed under the Dharmāyatana that manifests upon the preceding five sense objects. For example, when I look at a book, upon the material form of the book there manifests a mental object of the book, referring to the book's shape and size, its length, breadth, squareness, and roundness, the quality and thickness of the paper, the size of the characters and their forms, the content and information within, and so forth—all of these belong to the mental object, which is the object perceived and discerned by the mind consciousness. When the manas confronts the mental object and the eye faculty confronts the colors of the book, the mind consciousness and the eye consciousness arise simultaneously to discern the book, yet the scope and degree of fineness or coarseness of what they discern are different.