The Difference between Vitarka (Initial Application) and Vicāra (Sustained Examination)

The Difference between Vitarka and Vicāra

Vitarka: the coarse mental activity of the mind—seeking, searching, inferring, deducing, thinking, and analyzing...

Vicāra: the subtle mental activity of the mind—waiting, investigating, scrutinizing, pondering, examining in detail...

Vitarka is generally the mental activity of the mind consciousness; the manas also has the activity of vitarka, but it is far too difficult to observe. When the mind consciousness has forgotten certain people or matters, the manas is in a state of vitarka, while the mind consciousness may be in a state of vitarka, or may be in a state of vicāra. When the manas is in a state of vicāra, the mind consciousness has long since ceased to seek, and may even have ceased to scrutinize, leaving the manas to operate entirely on its own.

The vicāra of the manas is more observable than its vitarka, yet its mode of activity is extremely subtle. That is why countless people deny most of the mental factors of the manas, claiming they do not exist—when in fact they simply cannot be observed. Not knowing or understanding them, they simply deny them outright. This attitude is truly not good; it cannot increase wisdom, and it is also dishonest. Honesty is itself a mental factor, belonging to the wholesome mental factors, though it is not included among the fifty-one mental factors. Whatever is an activity of the mind, a mode of the mind, a mode of activity of the mind, or a nature of the mind, belongs to the mental factors—and these can be wholesome or unwholesome.