What is the state of the mind consciousness in the unconditioned?

Question: If the mind consciousness remains in nonaction for a long time, will its functions and capacities be lost? And will the manas give up its role or take over its functions?

Answer: The meaning of nonaction is that bodily, verbal, and mental actions are not engaged in. Nonaction of mind means not deliberating or discerning—that is, not thinking, not pondering, not making choices, emptying the mental thoughts. This directly leads to two results: one result is that the body does not act and the mouth does not speak—the body does not move and the mouth does not speak; the other result is that the body acts and the mouth speaks, with body and mouth operating without the mind's involvement, manifesting as mechanical, automatic, habitual behavior. Sages do many things in this mindless way; worthies are sometimes like this, in certain respects; ordinary beings are only occasionally and briefly nonactive with respect to individual matters, but this is not true nonaction or true mindlessness—it is merely not caring. Lazy people may also appear nonactive on the surface, but in fact it is just laziness.

However, for the mind consciousness to be nonactive, the manas must consent, or the manas itself must be nonactive, for only then can the mind consciousness be nonactive. This is because the mind consciousness cannot be the master, cannot exist and operate independently, and cannot escape the deliberation and choice-making of the manas as the master consciousness. If one has the capacity for direct perception (pratyakṣa) in the Yogācāra sense, one will discover the truth of the manas operating behind the scenes, and will discover the inseparably close cooperative relationship between the mind consciousness and the manas.

If the mind consciousness long engages in no thinking, does nothing, and makes no discriminations whatsoever, it will become dull and foolish, its functions weakening, degenerating, and even being lost. Some degeneration of function is temporary, some is long-term; after further training for a period of time, once one becomes familiar with sense objects again, one can still return to the original state of wisdom. The mind consciousness becoming nonactive does not necessarily mean it disappears—its functions are merely weakened, or it is lazy, or it spends all day in meditative concentration (samādhi) doing nothing, so that it has no experience of sense objects, becomes slow in speech, and acts without wisdom. The degeneration and weakening of the mind consciousness's functions is a consequence of the manas's choice, resulting from the manas being nonactive and unwilling to engage. When the manas wants to engage, the mind consciousness will still strive to adapt to sense objects and increase its wisdom. The mind consciousness and the first five consciousnesses are the capable assistants that the manas must use; the manas will not give them up and leave them unused—it is only a matter of how much they are used.

When the mind consciousness's functions are weakened, the manas's functions may grow: its capacity for deliberation (manana) will strengthen, its ability to personally experience and respond to sense objects will strengthen, and its wisdom will increase, but it cannot completely replace the mind consciousness. This requires quite deep meditative concentration and realized wisdom, and the degree to which it can replace the mind consciousness's functions varies according to the level of wisdom attained through each person's cultivation and realization. Bodhisattvas at the eighth bhūmi and above can have the manas completely replace the functions of the mind consciousness and the five sense consciousnesses; bhūmi bodhisattvas before the fourth dhyāna cannot yet do this—at most they can only gain enhanced wisdom.

There is a difference between the bodhisattva's nonaction and the arhat's nonaction. The arhat's nonaction is the nonaction of giving up worldly dharmas and not engaging—it is the first kind of nonaction. The bodhisattva's is the second kind of nonaction: doing whatever should be done as much as possible, not fearing to act, not refusing to act, yet while acting, the mind is empty and seeks nothing. Therefore the bodhisattva's wisdom surpasses that of the arhat, and the bodhisattva also becomes a Buddha the fastest.