The Five Names of the Manas and Their Meanings (II)

Original text: 四名智识。谓分别染净。诸差别法。

Explanation: The fourth name of the manas is "the consciousness of wisdom" (智识), which can discriminate all defiled and pure dharmas, all differentiated dharmas, and can clearly distinguish the specific characteristics of all dharmas. The Awakening of Faith says that the manas is the consciousness of wisdom, which is absolutely correct. A master consciousness represents the foundation of sentient beings and determines everything about them. If the master consciousness of the five-aggregate body did not possess such wisdom, then the five aggregates would have no wisdom, and there would be no wise people in the world. If one says that the manas has inferior wisdom, that is not entirely correct. When discriminating dharma-objects that are excessively specific and subtle, the manas is indeed inferior to the mind consciousness, and that is why the mind consciousness is needed. But once the manas has the capacity to discriminate subtle dharma-objects, the mind consciousness and the five sense consciousnesses become useless; the manas directly replaces the functions of the six consciousnesses by itself—relying on the faculties rather than the consciousnesses—and then there are not so many troubles and not so many obstructions, and great supernatural powers manifest.  

Original text: 五名相续识。谓恒作意。相应不断。任持过去。善恶等业。令无失坏。成熟现未。苦乐等报。使无违越。已曾经事。忽然忆念。未曾经事。妄生分别。

Explanation: The fifth name of the manas is "the consciousness of continuity" (相续识). The manas is called the consciousness of continuity because its five universal mental factors operate in perpetual continuity without interruption, and the ālayavijñāna, following the manas, continuously produces all dharmas and operates all dharmas, so the five-aggregate world appears in continuous succession—this life ceases, the next life arises, birth following birth without end. In this way, all wholesome and unwholesome, defiled and pure dharmas continuously manifest following the manas; wholesome and unwholesome karma is never severed, and the karmic retribution of wholesome and unwholesome deeds is never lost or destroyed. Moreover, the manas can ripen the present and future karmic retribution of suffering and happiness, without violating the principles of cause and effect. Matters experienced over beginningless kalpas, life after life, will suddenly be recollected when conditions permit, and matters not yet experienced will also be falsely discriminated.

Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa said that the manas can sustain and hold wholesome and unwholesome karma, not allowing the karmic seeds to be lost or destroyed, and can ripen karmic retribution. This meaning is extremely profound and its significance extremely great. The bodily, verbal, and mental actions created by the six consciousnesses are, first, stored as seeds in the ālayavijñāna, which grasps and contains them; second, sustained and carried by the manas into future lives. What does "sustain and hold" (任持) mean? To sustain and hold means to bear and carry, to take responsibility for karmic actions.

Why must karmic actions be borne and taken responsibility for by the manas? Because the manas is the master consciousness, the sovereign of the five-aggregate body, the dominator and originator of all karmic actions; the six consciousnesses merely play an assisting, cooperating role and are not the master. The ālayavijñāna is even less the master of karmic actions; it does not take charge and create karma. Therefore, after karma is created, all karmic actions are the responsibility of the manas, which bears the karmic results. Even if the six consciousnesses wished to bear the karmic actions, they could not: first, they do not take charge; second, they perish at death and cannot carry karmic seeds into future lives. Since all dharmas are created under the manas's charge, the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of karmic actions reflects the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of the manas. The manas is fully endowed with wholesome and unwholesome mental factors, which correspond to karmic actions and karmic seeds, and it carries these wholesome and unwholesome mental factors into future lives. Therefore, cultivation is precisely the cultivation of the manas—steeping and transforming the manas, changing the manas.

The manas can also ripen the karmic retribution of wholesome and unwholesome, suffering and happy results, in accordance with cause and effect. Someone may ask: Is karmic retribution not ripened by the ālayavijñāna? The ālayavijñāna can only manifest and actualize ripened karmic seeds, realizing karmic retribution; it does not ripen karmic retribution and karmic seeds. Only when karmic conditions are complete and the karmic seeds have ripened can the ālayavijñāna manifest the ripened karmic seeds, and only then does karmic retribution appear. Ripening karmic seeds and karmic retribution is not the business of the ālayavijñāna but of the manas. The manas has karma following it, and when external conditions manifest, karmic retribution appears.

The Awakening of Faith here says that the manas has the function of recollection, and this statement is extremely correct, because the manas is also a mind—indeed an extremely important mind, playing an extremely important role. The manas has experienced all dharmas, and having experienced them, it can of course recollect them, and it can prompt the mind consciousness to recall the past based on this recollection. Therefore it is said that the manas has the mental factor of mindfulness (念心所) and can recollect and be mindful of all dharmas. Only the master of all dharmas would be mindful of and recollect them; when it wants something dealt with, it summons its assistants to handle it specifically. The assistants do not appear constantly; they can only appear when the master needs them, and when the master does not need them, they do not manifest.

The meanings of the five names of the manas are very profound in dharma principles and contain a great deal of information, overturning many people's old, unreasonable understandings of the manas, as well as overturning the understandings of Yogācāra treatise masters ancient and modern. After all, the dharma principles of the manas belong to the domain of the seed-wisdom (种智) of Yogācāra; those without Yogācāra realization cannot observe the manas directly through valid direct cognition, so misunderstandings are inevitable. In history, the first bodhisattva attaining the first bhūmi certified by the World-Honored One and recorded in sources was Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna, followed by Bodhisattva Asaṅga, and then Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa. It is said that Ānanda also entered the first bhūmi, but did not transmit the dharma of Yogācāra. Among the Chan patriarchs, there may have been others who entered the first bhūmi without transmitting the Yogācāra dharma; it is only that when they first entered the bhūmi, their seed-wisdom of Yogācāra was not deep and their power of observation of Yogācāra was not strong, so they could not yet transmit the Yogācāra dharma.

Apart from these, as for others who transmitted the Yogācāra dharma, there is no evidence proving they had the realization of first-bhūmi bodhisattvas, so the Yogācāra treatises they wrote all have flaws and errors; their dharma principles are not entirely correct and can only serve as reference, not to be accepted in full. Among Yogācāra treatises, the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna written by Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa has an extremely high level of realization; it can truthfully observe the mental factors of the manas. Its translator, Bodhisattva Śikṣānanda, also had a very high level of realization, and his translation is precise, in accord with reason and truth. This is a Yogācāra treatise worthy of trust.