The Principles and Goals of Meditative Concentration

For ordinary people, the mind consciousness ceases and is interrupted only after falling asleep, when no seeds of consciousness are produced; at all other times the mind consciousness exists, and its seeds have never been cut off. It is merely that the seeds of consciousness are distributed across various dharmas rather than concentrated, and so the power of discernment is poor, wisdom is weak, and thinking is not meticulous. Practicing meditation allows the seeds of the mind consciousness to flow into a few dharmas, or just one dharma, so that the power of discernment becomes great and wisdom becomes strong. This is one aspect. On the other hand, meditation can also cause the manas to engage less in mental attention and grasping toward other mental sense-objects, settling on a few mental sense-objects; with attention concentrated, the mind becomes meticulous, deliberation becomes clear, wisdom can arise, and thus the Dharma can be realized.

For example, when the body faculty moves slowly, the mind consciousness concentrates on the activity of the body faculty, and the manas also attends to the activity of the body faculty, thereby tethering the manas. In this way, as the manas focuses on the activity of the body faculty and grasps less, the tathāgatagarbha rarely manifests other mental sense-objects, not letting the manas scatter its attention. At this point the manas and the mind consciousness will discover that the activity of the body faculty is mechanical, like a puppet—this is not me; it moves involuntarily like this, and is fundamentally not me—and thus the view of the body as self is eliminated. In fact, the mind consciousness has long known that the body is not the self; one knows this even without practicing meditation. It is only that the manas cannot be certain in its own mind. Practicing meditation is precisely to settle the manas so that it can focus on deliberating on whether the conclusion reached by the mind consciousness is actually correct. The manas must observe through direct perception to verify the mind consciousness's conclusion. In the process of the body faculty's slow movement, the manas finally observes that the mechanical body faculty is not the self and does not belong to the self, and thus there is the sudden awakening of the Small Vehicle—a sudden great enlightenment.