The Pervasive Cognitive Nature of the Manas

When asleep, with a "bang" — a loud sound appears — only then does the manas give rise to the six consciousnesses, and the person wakes up. So when there is no loud sound, do the six consciousnesses arise or not? For example, when we sit in meditation cultivating concentration, the mind consciousness wholeheartedly wants to settle down and does not want to discern sounds, yet the habitual momentum of the manas cannot be stopped — sounds still arise at the ears, the mind consciousness still knows them, and the mind cannot empty itself. When one is awake and the mind is calm, no matter how tiny a sound at the ear, it can be heard — for example, the faintest sound of the heartbeat, the sound of breathing, the buzzing of mosquitoes and insects, a distant sound about to fade away — the mind consciousness knows them all.

Because the manas universally attends to all dharmas — there is not a single dharma that the manas does not attend to; subtle, coarse, major, or minor, the manas attends to them all. Even if the mind consciousness does not want these dharmas and dislikes them, the manas still brings them forth, and the mind consciousness has no way to prevent it. This is the universal-attending nature of the manas, the operation of its habitual tendencies. When the manas universally attends to all dharmas, sometimes it is because of desire, sometimes because of aspirations and vows, sometimes because of habitual tendencies, and at other times because the sense objects are simply too powerful — the manas cannot resist the temptation and has no choice but to discern, and thus its grasping-attending nature arises. After the manas attends to dharmas, it causes the mind consciousness to manifest, which can then discern the six sense objects and perceive the marks of sense realms.

So is the manas's own capacity to perceive the marks of sense realms inferior? Actually, it is not inferior. Where a natural disaster or human calamity is about to occur, the mind consciousness knows nothing at all, yet the manas knows, and decides to move house to escape the disaster, or displays panicked behavior — all of which shows that the manas knows something is about to happen. At times, when the manas knows something is going to happen and wants the mind consciousness to know it, it produces a dream, letting the mind consciousness discern it in the dream, or lets the mind consciousness discern it in meditative concentration. Would you say the manas is clever or not? Prior to this, did the mind consciousness know these things? If the manas does not alert it, the mind consciousness simply does not know.

The manas knows these impending events entirely on its own, relying solely on the tathāgatagarbha — the six consciousnesses have nothing to do with it, and the mind consciousness knows nothing at all; moreover, the manas must inform it through dreams before the mind consciousness can know what is about to happen. While sitting in meditation, the manas can even return to past lives and manifest the events of past lives for the mind consciousness — who owed you how many dollars in a past life, even a few cents, important and unimportant matters in a great heap — all can be discerned by the mind consciousness. Is the mind consciousness involved here? No — it is all known by the manas relying solely on the tathāgatagarbha. When the manas operates alone, it is very clever, and has no need to rely on the six consciousnesses.

The dharmas of the manas are extremely subtle; our mind must be extremely subtle, our meditative concentration extremely good, our wisdom extremely good, and our direct-perception cognition extremely good, before we can excavate those subtle dharmas bit by bit. Lacking meditative concentration and wisdom, one can only engage in shallow contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) at the coarse level. Some people's minds are extremely coarse; even at the coarse level they cannot carry out contemplative practice, let alone with the subtle dharmas.