Even Relying on the Nimbleness of the Manas, One Cannot Escape Karmic Conditions and Karmic Retribution

The innate ability to avoid danger belongs to the manas; the mind consciousness, at the moment of birth, simply does not understand anything. If in a lifetime one never encounters a suitable environment for learning, the mind consciousness will never understand such matters. But the manas possesses an inborn survival ability that requires no guidance or conditioning from the mind consciousness.

The manas of animals also has a quick-witted side, and the abilities they are born with are not few. When animals encounter danger for the first time, no one teaches them, yet they know what to do. The first time they encounter an earthquake, they have a premonition and know to find a way to escape. No one teaches them; they are born knowing. This is the quick-wittedness of the manas—there is no other explanation.

However, no matter how quick-witted the manas is, it cannot escape karmic conditions, nor can it escape karmic retribution. Even if one is born in the heaven of neither perception nor non-perception to receive a wholesome reward, if the manas craves and clings to that state, when an unwholesome retribution arrives at the end of life, one must still go to the three evil destinies to suffer. The manas can exercise no control whatsoever and has no way to escape.

No matter how quick-witted certain people's manas is, when evil conditions appear, death must still come when it is due, and there is no escaping it by any means. Although in the eyes of others it might seem entirely avoidable—that any accident could be prevented—for those upon whom karmic retribution has arrived, there is no room for any choice, no opportunity to choose at all, no opportunity to think; life simply vanishes.

No matter how quick-witted or clever certain people's manas is, due to a lack of karmic seeds and merit, they still cannot understand even very shallow and straightforward dharma principles, cannot comprehend them correctly, let alone contemplate them in accordance with reason—how regrettable. No matter how quick-witted and clever certain people's manas is, though they single-mindedly pursue high office and generous salaries, because they did not cultivate merit in past lives, every wholesome reward brushes past them, and they live in pain, complaining their whole lives.

No matter how quick-witted and clever certain people's manas is, because they studied Buddhism for only a short time in past lives, even though they diligently and earnestly cultivate and study the Buddha's teachings throughout this life with unremitting diligence, they cannot truly understand and contemplate even such a small-vehicle dharma as the elimination of self-view (ahaṃkāra-mamakāra-parityāga), let alone realize any fruit of the path.