Even Relying on the Cleverness of the Manas, One Cannot Escape Karmic Conditions and Karmic Retribution.

The innate ability to avoid danger from birth belongs to the manas; the mind consciousness, at the moment of birth, simply does not understand it. If one never encounters the corresponding environment to learn it in one's lifetime, the mind consciousness will never understand such things. But the manas possesses an innate survival ability that requires no guidance or conditioning from the mind consciousness.

The manas of animals also has a clever side, and the abilities they possess from birth are quite numerous. When animals encounter danger for the first time, no one teaches them, yet they understand it. The first time they encounter an earthquake, they have a premonition and know to find ways to escape. No one teaches them; they are born knowing. This is the cleverness of the manas—there is nothing else besides this.

However, no matter how clever the manas is, it cannot escape karmic conditions, nor can it escape karmic retribution. Even if one is born in the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception to receive wholesome retribution, if the manas craves and clings to that state, when an unwholesome retribution arrives at the end of life, one must still go to the three evil destinies to suffer. The manas can exercise no control whatsoever and has no way to escape.

No matter how clever the manas of certain people is, when adverse conditions arise, if death is due, death will still come—there is no way to avoid it. Although in the eyes of others it could have been completely avoided, and any accident could have been prevented, for those upon whom karmic retribution has arrived, there is no room for any choice, and indeed no opportunity to choose at all. Without a chance to think, life simply vanishes.

No matter how clever the manas of certain people is, due to a lack of karmic seeds and merit, they still cannot understand even very simple and straightforward Dharma principles, cannot correctly comprehend them, and even less can they contemplate them in accordance with reason—how regrettable. No matter how clever and intelligent the manas of certain people is, if they single-mindedly pursue high office and generous salaries, yet because they did not cultivate merit in past lives, all wholesome retributions pass them by, and they suffer through life, complaining their whole lives.

No matter how clever and intelligent the manas of certain people is, because they studied Buddhism for only a short time in past lives, even though they diligently and earnestly cultivate and study the Buddhadharma their whole lives with unremitting diligence, they cannot truly understand and contemplate even such a Hinayana teaching as the eradication of the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa), let alone attain realization of the fruits.