The Mental Factors of the Mind Consciousness

The mental factors of the sixth consciousness, on the one hand, are influenced and permeated by the mental factors of the manas, and on the other hand, they undergo transformation through permeation by the environment. At birth, the mental factors of the mind consciousness are entirely influenced and directed by the manas, with no autonomy whatsoever. As one gradually grows up, one is increasingly influenced by the surrounding environment—for example, parents, relatives, playmates, school education, television, the internet, and so on. In this way, a child who is innately kind may gradually pick up bad habits, or a child born with bad habits may gradually become well-behaved—this is the effect of environmental permeation. If a child is born with very heavy habits of both good and evil, then it is not easy for the child to be influenced by the environment: a good child remains a good child and will not turn bad, and a bad child remains a bad child and will not turn good. In such a case, the operative force of the manas appears to be quite considerable. On yet another hand, the mental factors of the mind consciousness can also influence and permeate the manas; after the manas has been permeated, the karmic seeds change, the karmic force is turned around, and the retributive results undergo change.

The mind consciousness of an ordinary being corresponds to fifty-one mental factors, but not everyone's sixth consciousness fully possesses all fifty-one; some mental factors do not manifest, while others manifest when their causes and conditions are complete. In some people, the afflictive mental factors manifest more, and the wholesome mental factors manifest less. A person in whom the afflictive mental factors are fully and completely manifest has extremely heavy afflictions and quite poor moral character.

The mental factors of sentient beings' sixth consciousness number at most fifty-one, and may be fewer than fifty-one. When they are reduced to only twenty-one, that is a bodhisattva of the eighth bhūmi or above; when the twenty-one mental factors are fully and completely possessed, one has completely transformed consciousness into wisdom and attained buddhahood. Thus, sentient beings each differ in their mental factors, and their emphases also differ. In particular, the sixth consciousness mental factors of non-Buddhist ordinary beings who possess the four dhyānas and eight samādhis are markedly fewer than fifty-one. For bodhisattvas of the three stages of worthiness before passing the final barrier, and for those of the first and second fruits, the mental factors must necessarily be reduced—mainly, the self-view among the fundamental afflictive mental factors is gone, and the universal secondary afflictions are also reduced and lightened. For a person of the fourth fruit, all the fundamental afflictive mental factors have been extinguished, and both the universal and middling secondary afflictions have been extinguished; the minor secondary afflictions still exist, only lightened. For a person of the third fruit, among the fundamental afflictions, pride and delusion have not yet been extinguished, but are markedly much lightened; the universal and middling secondary afflictions have been extinguished, the minor secondary afflictions still remain, and their habitual tendencies are heavier than those of a person of the fourth fruit.

For bodhisattvas who have passed the final barrier and for post-bhūmi bodhisattvas, the mental factors are roughly the same as those of Hīnayāna practitioners of the third and fourth fruits. The only difference is that for post-bhūmi bodhisattvas, the minor secondary afflictions gradually lighten and diminish beginning from the first bhūmi and are all extinguished before entering the eighth bhūmi. If the manas has no afflictions or habitual tendencies, the mind consciousness has even less of them. For bodhisattvas after the eighth bhūmi, the mental factors of the sixth consciousness initially correspond to the twenty-one mental factors—the five universal factors, the five particular factors, and the eleven wholesome factors—but they are not fully possessed; only at the stage of buddhahood can they be completely possessed.