How Does the Tathāgatagarbha Record Karmic Actions and Emit Karmic Seeds (6)?

After the seeds are stored, they serve as the habit-energy seeds of the manas, and the manas carries the corresponding habit-energies. When the seeds of the six consciousnesses are transmitted outward, the six consciousnesses become manifest. When the six consciousnesses manifest, on the one hand they must conform to the mental activities of the manas, because the manas is the consciousness that takes charge and can direct the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses; on the other hand, they will encounter new environments and will be influenced and perfumed by those environments. It is like water flowing through an area, carrying along and mixing with the miscellaneous things around that area, so that the water becomes perfumed by them. When the environments encountered by the six consciousnesses differ, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions may also differ; and after the six consciousnesses are perfumed, they in turn perfume the manas.

For example, suppose the six consciousnesses originally had defiled mental activities, but suddenly encounter a wholesome condition, encounter the Buddhadharma, and thus take up Buddhist practice and cultivation. After studying the Buddhadharma, understanding cause and effect, one knows what should be done and what should not be done. Then the mind consciousness transmits the principles it has understood to the manas, making the manas understand them as well, and in this way the manas is perfumed. The bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses studying Buddhism are stored as seeds in the tathāgatagarbha; if the manas has been perfumed, its mental activities are also stored as seeds in the tathāgatagarbha. When the tathāgatagarbha then transmits the seeds outward, the seeds become manifest, and the bodily, verbal, and mental actions conform to Buddhist principles. In this way the manas has been perfumed and transformed: the seeds transmitted outward are pure, and the mental activities of the manas have changed.

In this process, for all bodily, verbal, and mental actions, the manas plays the decisive role; and in the tathāgatagarbha's storing of the karmic seeds of bodily, verbal, and mental actions, the manas also plays the decisive role—He is the link or relay station connecting the tathāgatagarbha and the six consciousnesses. Whether the tathāgatagarbha is storing karmic seeds or transmitting karmic seeds, the manas is a very important pivot. This is because the manas's discriminating wisdom regarding the specific six sense-objects is relatively weak, and He cannot make specific discriminations of the six sense-objects. The specific contents discriminated by the six consciousnesses must be transmitted to the manas moment by moment; in this way, the manas comes to know the contents discriminated by the six consciousnesses. Then the manas gives rise to the mental factor of volition (cetanā), deciding how to act. These decisions may be made according to the manas's own habitual tendencies, or they may be made according to the analysis of the six consciousnesses—it is not fixed.

The manas may follow His habit-energies, or He may make choices according to the newly perfumed contents of the six consciousnesses, the newly discriminated information, and the analyzed principles. Which one plays the leading role—whether it is one's own habit-energies that play the leading role, or the newly perfumed principles from the six consciousnesses—is not fixed. Perhaps the manas will synthesize them; perhaps He acts according to His own habit-energies, or perhaps according to the principles analyzed by the six consciousnesses. After the manas has deliberated (manasikāra) and made His choice, the tathāgatagarbha, discerning His mental activities, will give rise to the six consciousnesses, and the bodily, verbal, and mental actions are carried out according to the contents of the manas's deliberation and according to the manas's mental activities. How the bodily, verbal, and mental actions are carried out—the manas's deliberation and choice are crucial.

Moreover, after the manas has finished discerning the information discriminated by the six consciousnesses, how He deliberates, how He chooses, what mental activities He gives rise to, and whether those mental activities are defiled or pure—the tathāgatagarbha will also faithfully make a record, storing the seeds of those mental activities. The tathāgatagarbha also carries the manas's mental activities—all of His mental activities, whether wholesome or unwholesome—back into the tathāgatagarbha, where they are stored as seeds. What are the manas's mental activities? One is His original habit-energies; the other is the influence on the manas of the contents discriminated by the six consciousnesses. That is to say, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses are also stored into the tathāgatagarbha through the manas. Whatever mental activities the six consciousnesses have within those bodily, verbal, and mental actions, the tathāgatagarbha records and stores exactly those mental activities; whatever mental activities the seventh consciousness, the manas, has, the tathāgatagarbha records and stores exactly those mental activities—perfectly faithfully, without the slightest omission. Moreover, the storing occurs simultaneously, moment by moment, without a single link ever being missed. After everything has been stored, the entire event is stored as a karmic seed.