A person's bearing, temperament, demeanor, and cultivation largely depend on the manas.

The manas has a broad scope of discernment; it governs the overall situation and the whole, grasps the macro perspective, and emphasizes strategy. The mind consciousness, by contrast, has a limited scope of discernment; it grasps the partial, the subtle, and the in-depth, and emphasizes tactics. A person whose manas is wise is suited to be a leader or a general, while one whose mind consciousness is clever is suited to be a staff advisor or a department head, responsible for managing concrete affairs. When the two are combined, one can rise or descend, be broad or detailed, possessing both strategy and tactics, and be invincible wherever one goes.

A person with the bearing of a great general is one whose manas is wise and experienced. Those engaged in scientific research have a mind consciousness that is meticulous and penetrating. Therefore, a person's momentum, temperament, demeanor, and self-cultivation mostly reside in the manas and mostly refer to the manas. This is something that cannot be learned; learning it on the spot would be too late, and even if the mind consciousness tried to fake it, it could not keep up the pretense for long. What is innate is a person's intrinsic traits and characteristics; that is not something learned on the spot and cannot be disguised.

As for the development and overall direction of the Buddhist community, those who can accurately grasp it must be long-trained bodhisattvas. Because of their long training, their manas has gone through much; they are widely experienced and knowledgeable, and compared with newly trained bodhisattvas, they understand much more of Buddhist and cultivation history and can see through many phenomena within Buddhism. Therefore, what accords with the Dharma and what does not, the advantages and disadvantages within the Buddha-Dharma, they see very clearly, and they also see very clearly whether sentient beings' faculties are sharp or dull. All this is the credit of the manas, though of course it is not apart from the discrimination and deliberation of the mind consciousness.

Newly trained bodhisattvas, having gone through little and having heavy afflictions, lack experience; they cannot see clearly the affairs within Buddhism, cannot see clearly whether sentient beings' faculties are sharp or dull, and cannot see clearly the direction of the Dharma and its advantages and disadvantages. They often view issues in a one-sided and superficial way, without thoroughness, so the mistakes they make will be more numerous, and the people and affairs they misjudge will also be more numerous.