Profound Meaning of the Diamond Sutra from the Consciousness-Only Perspective (20)

The tongue consciousness tastes flavors, discerning sour, sweet, bitter, and pungent; the mind consciousness discerns the types of food, their quality, and the degree of their flavor, giving rise to a mind of liking and disliking, and thus there arise feelings of suffering, happiness, or neither-suffering-nor-happiness, and bodily, verbal, and mental actions are produced. The body consciousness experiences contact with sense objects, discerning cold and heat, hunger and thirst, fullness, softness and hardness, and so on; at the same time the mind consciousness discerns fatigue, tranquility (praśama), comfort, tiredness, drowsiness, and so on, giving rise to mental activities such as liking and disliking, and thus there arise feelings of suffering, happiness, or neither-suffering-nor-happiness, along with other bodily, verbal, and mental actions. The mind consciousness discerns simultaneously with the first five consciousnesses, and can also discern on its own—recollecting the past, planning for the future, analyzing, reasoning, and judging—giving rise to feelings of suffering, happiness, sorrow, joy, or neutral feeling (upekṣā-vedanā), and producing the next bodily, verbal, and mental actions.

The manas is also mind, without shape or any form or features; it is also called the formless faculty (indriya). It has existed since beginningless kalpas and ceases only when an arhat enters Nirvāṇa without remainder. It is the consciousness of self-grasping: from beginningless kalpas it has clung to the self, taking everything as "I" and "mine," grasping the functions of the first six consciousnesses as its own, and grasping the functions of the eighth consciousness as its own. Greed, anger, delusion, arrogance, doubt, and wrong view (mithyā-dṛṣṭi) arise and manifest without cease; it is the root of karma creation, always directing the six consciousnesses to act according to its own habits. Cultivation is mainly about transforming Him. The manas undergoes one transformation after enlightenment upon attaining the bhūmis, another transformation when one becomes an eighth-bhūmi bodhisattva, and at buddhahood He is completely transformed into the wisdom of equality (samatā-jñāna); the mind consciousness becomes the wisdom of wondrous observation (pratyavekṣaṇā-jñāna), the first five consciousnesses become the wisdom of accomplishing what is to be done (kṛtyānuṣṭhāna-jñāna), and the eighth consciousness becomes the great mirror-like wisdom (ādarśa-jñāna). If one can eradicate the self-grasping nature of the manas and no longer cling to oneself, then at the end of life one will extinguish one's own five aggregates (pañca-skandha) and eighteen realms, and enter Nirvāṇa without remainder.