Do Habitual Tendencies Have Seeds?

When a certain thing is done frequently and becomes habitual, one will later do similar things unconsciously—this is called habitual tendency (vāsanā). Habitual tendencies reside in the manas. What the manas is accustomed to doing will manifest as habitual tendencies, and the mind consciousness is often unaware of the manas's habitual tendencies. Habitual tendencies are divided into good ones and bad ones. Bad habitual tendencies belong to ignorance and afflictions. The manas has had ignorance and afflictions since beginningless kalpas, which is called beginningless ignorance, and it has no seeds. However, before beginningless kalpas, the manas had no afflictive habitual tendencies, because without the creation of the five-aggregate body, habitual tendencies could not be formed. Later, after the five-aggregate body came into existence, the manas used the five-aggregate body to continuously manifest ignorance and afflictions, and thus habitual tendencies were formed; the ignorance and afflictions that were created formed seeds. Therefore, habitual tendencies have seeds, whereas beginningless ignorance has no seeds.

As the five-aggregate body operates in the mundane world life after life, ignorance is constantly increased and lessened, and thus the habitual tendencies of ignorance are constantly strengthened and weakened. Therefore, all the ignorance and afflictions to be severed in the course of practice are primarily focused on severing the manas's afflictions. Once the manas's afflictions are severed, the manas's afflictive habitual tendencies and the peripheral afflictions of the six consciousnesses will vanish along with them. In actuality, however, during the process of cultivation, it is the mind consciousness that first subdues and severs afflictions, because the mind consciousness grasps principles quickly; once it understands the correct principles, it can cultivate and realize its own mind, whereas the manas's afflictions are deep and heavy and it grasps principles slowly, making it very difficult to correct itself. Therefore, if the manas does not subdue and sever afflictions, then even after the mind consciousness's afflictions are severed, they will arise again depending on the manas. Cultivation means severing all the ignorance of the manas and increasing the manas's illumination. When ignorance is completely severed and illumination reaches its limit, the Buddha Way is accomplished.