The Distinctions of the Ultimate Faculties Among Sentient Beings in Various Realms

Beings in the human realm possess subtle sense faculties, and beings in the animal realm also possess subtle sense faculties. The physical bodies of animals, like those of humans, are composed of flesh formed from the four great elements, possessing brains and subtle sense faculties. When the subtle sense faculties become diseased, animals too can experience schizophrenia or madness. Due to karmic obstructions, the subtle sense faculties of animals are inferior to those of humans; they perceive people and objects with significant illusions and do not perceive reality as it truly is. However, various animals possess specialized abilities characteristic of their kind. For example, some animals have acute vision enabling night sight, some have acute hearing, some have acute sense of smell, some have acute sense of taste, and some have acute sense of touch. Yet, animals are generally deficient in the cognitive power of consciousness and lack analytical reasoning. They mostly rely on the intuitive power of the mental faculty (manas), thus appearing relatively simple-minded. Apart from the killing karma created for the sake of filling their stomachs and survival, they scarcely use their minds to create other unwholesome karmas, belonging to beings who primarily experience the results of their karma.

Beings in the four formless heavens (ārūpyadhātu), because their environment is formless, lack the five sense objects of form, lack physical bodies, and consequently lack subtle sense faculties. They also lack the internal five sense objects and the internal mental object (dharmāyatana), and lack the five sense consciousnesses. However, they possess mind consciousness (mano-vijñāna), the mental faculty (manas), and the eighth consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna). Their eighth consciousness and mental faculty exist perpetually without cessation, and their mind consciousness also exists perpetually without cessation. What their mind consciousness cognizes is the "manifestations of the mind alone" (dhyāna-svapna) within the meditative state, lacking external mental objects, consisting only of these mental manifestations. If the mind consciousness were to cease, only the eighth consciousness and the mental faculty would remain, which pertains to the state of the cessation of perception and feeling (nirodha-samāpatti). Therefore, the mind consciousness of formless realm deities also exists perpetually without cessation. There is no distinction between day and night; they do not require sleep or rest, remaining perpetually in a dhyānic state, facing the manifestations of the mind alone.