Mental Factors Are Mind-Nature and Mental Activities

The operation of the mind consciousness and its mental factors (caittas) is closely connected with a person's character, temperament, disposition, and wisdom. If you want to understand how the mental factors operate, you can observe each person from the moment they first come into contact with a matter until the moment they finally make a decision—their facial expressions, gaze, countenance, speech, behavior, speed of reaction, and so on. From this, you can discern the process of each mental factor's operation and its speed, as well as how heavy each person's habitual tendencies are and how good their wisdom is. This series of mental activities is both a manifestation of a person's mental disposition, habitual tendencies, afflictions, and wisdom, and also a manifestation of the mental factors.

Some people are hot-tempered and rather coarse in mind. After coming into contact with people and affairs, they only make a rough discrimination, regardless of right or wrong and of details, and assume that what they have discriminated is ultimate and without error. Then feelings arise—joy, anger, greed, or aversion—with very heavy grasping, and then, without weighing anything, they directly make a choice. The operation of their mental factors is simple and fast, but the consequences may be unthinkable. Other people, after making a rough discrimination and once feelings have arisen, will again carefully discriminate and analyze, then reverse their mistaken understanding; their feelings change, and only then do they make a decision. The operation of their mental factors is somewhat more complex and will run repeatedly. Many people, as their discrimination deepens continuously, undergo constant changes in the mental factor of feeling; they are swayed by people, things, and events, their minds completely immersed in them, unable to transcend.

A rational person, if they have not thoroughly understood people, things, and affairs, will not develop any thoughts or emotions, nor will they easily make judgments or decisions; they will not take their temporary, rough understanding as ultimate, but will observe, discern, and deliberate over and over again. A person of cultivation, even when what they discriminate is something they like or dislike, will have a mind unmoved by it, transcendent beyond things, liberated.

For careless, slapdash people, the mental factors run quickly and simply; for people of meticulous mind, the mental factors run slowly, deeply, subtly, and complexly. For people with heavy afflictions, the mental factors also run complexly, tangled and unclear. For dull people, perhaps after a quick discrimination they find their ability insufficient and give up, and the mental factors quickly cease; or perhaps they want to discriminate clearly, and then the mental factors run extremely slowly—long discrimination, long feeling, long deliberation (manasikāra)—yet they still cannot make a final decision. Clever and wise people may also discriminate clearly and quickly, deeply understanding its meaning, or they may be able to discriminate very deeply and meticulously to the very end, without error.

The operation of the mental factors is extremely intricate and complex, closely related to each person's character, temperament, disposition, and the weight of their afflictions and attachments, and also closely related to each person's self-cultivation, spiritual practice, meditative concentration (samādhi), observance of precepts, and wisdom.