The Attachment of the Manas to the Body

Question: After a person accidentally severs a finger, if it is reattached promptly within a certain period of time, it can regain its function. However, when an organ or a portion of flesh leaves the main body, it can still display vivid signs of life (such as twisting, twitching, etc.), which is a bit hard to understand. Through what does the manas keep that organ or portion of the body active? Just as when the coarse sense faculty (floating dust root) is gone, how do the manas and the tathāgatagarbha control the detached organ or the severed flesh? Can the tathāgatagarbha, through the manas, output seeds to the detached organ out of thin air? Or is this twitching merely an unconscious neural reflex? 

Answer: An organ that has just been detached is, like the organs on the body, jointly maintained by the manas and the tathāgatagarbha. The tathāgatagarbha provides the seeds of the four great elements to meet the needs of the body faculty. Once the manas deems the detached organ useless, it will abandon it, and then the tathāgatagarbha will no longer output the seeds of the four great elements, and those organs will lose their vital life force.

As the seeds of the four great elements continuously arise and disperse on the organ, the organ will exhibit the characteristics of the four great elements: the motility of the wind element, the solidity of the earth element, the moistening quality of the water element, and the warmth of the fire element. The particles composed of these seeds continuously undergo arising, abiding, alteration, and cessation, driving the particles to move and change constantly, thereby producing various forms of energy, such as kinetic energy, thermal energy, potential energy, and so on.

Flesh that has just been detached can move because the nerve tissue still has the function of conduction; its function has not died out, and both the manas and the tathāgatagarbha are still maintaining it. The more attached the manas is, the longer the flesh will move. Some animals have been dead for a long time, their bodies dissected into pieces and sold, yet the flesh is still moving. Such an animal is extremely attached to its own body; it knows exactly who bought its flesh, and in the future it will surely seek revenge and settle the score. When sentient beings come together, some repay kindness and debts, while others retaliate against one another in a cycle of enmity—the relationships are extremely complicated, and there is no one who does not have an enemy.