Eradicating the View of Self That Takes Consciousness as Self (Part Five)

There is also a mind consciousness that arises together with the nose consciousness—the consciousness that perceives smells together with the nose consciousness. It can discern the nature, source, category, and degree of a smell, whether it is harmful or not, its effects on oneself and on the environment, and so on; it can also think about how to handle it and how to deal with it. The arising of this consciousness requires many more conditions: there must be an external scent object (gandha-viṣaya)—whether a fragrance, an odor, or any other kind of smell, in any case this scent object must arise. There must also be the manas, the eighth consciousness, the mind consciousness's own seeds, the nose faculty, and the nose consciousness. Only with these causal and conditional factors can our mind consciousness manifest and perform its function of discrimination.

Once the mind consciousness has manifested, it can know what object this smell emanated from, what kind of smell it is, what its variety is, how fragrant it is, how foul it is, and how far away it is from us. Then it gives rise to delight, gives rise to aversion, gives rise to various feelings and experiences, and analyzes, plans, judges, deliberates, and reasons about this scent object. All of these functions are the operations of the mind consciousness. For the mind consciousness to arise, the eighth consciousness is the cause, and there must also be all kinds of conditions. Only when these causes and conditions gather together can the mind consciousness be born, and only afterward can a whole series of mental activities arise, such as discernment, reasoning, judgment, and deliberation. Therefore, this mind consciousness is constantly arising and ceasing; it lacks self-mastery (avaśatā), it is not autonomous, it is illusory and impermanent, and it is fundamentally not the self.