The Difference Between the First Five Consciousnesses and the Sixth Consciousness

The difference between the first five consciousnesses and the sixth consciousness is: the sixth consciousness often discriminates together with the first five consciousnesses, giving rise to mental activities such as analysis, thinking, reasoning, judgment, perception, and investigation. The five consciousnesses discern the coarse aspects of the five sense objects, while the sixth consciousness discerns the subtle aspects of the five sense objects. When the sixth consciousness is not discriminating together with the five consciousnesses, it is the solitary consciousness (mano-vijñāna-eka-citta). The sixth consciousness engaged in daydreaming is the solitary consciousness; the sixth consciousness pondering back and forth is the solitary consciousness; the mental activity during dreams is the solitary consciousness. For example, when looking at a person, the mind consciousness must analyze and discern that this person has a certain temperament, cultivation, education, and virtue; that this person's age is approximately such-and-such; whether the person is male or female; and what the person's character and disposition are like—all of these are contents discerned by the sixth consciousness.

Under normal circumstances, the mind consciousness discerns the five sense objects together with the five consciousnesses. The five consciousnesses discriminate the coarse forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangibles, while the mind consciousness discriminates the subtle forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangibles. The so-called subtle forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangibles are the mental sense-objects (dharma-viṣaya). For example, when the eye faculty contacts form as a sense object, the eighth consciousness produces the eye consciousness; when the manas contacts the mental sense-object upon the form, the eighth consciousness produces the mind consciousness. Then the eye consciousness and the mind consciousness together discriminate the form sense object, and thus one can clearly discern what the form sense object is. For example, when looking at a rice cooker, the eye consciousness knows the color of the rice cooker, while the mind consciousness knows the rice cooker's shape, whether it is new or old, its quality, its specific size, its construction, its materials, and so on. In fact, when the eyes see form, it is discerned jointly by the eye consciousness and the mind consciousness; it is not that the eye faculty, merely by having the nature of seeing, can see things. Although a dead person still has the eye faculty, they no longer have the eye consciousness and the mind consciousness, and therefore a dead person cannot see form. When seeing form, it is the eye consciousness that can discriminate information such as colors and brightness; beyond this, the conscious mind that can discriminate an object's size, shape (square or round), length, and other mental sense-objects is the mind consciousness.