How Tathāgatagarbha Records Karmic Actions and Projects Karmic Seeds (Part VI)

After the seeds are stored, they become the habit-energy seeds of the manas, and thus the manas carries corresponding habits. When the seeds of the six consciousnesses are delivered, the six consciousnesses manifest. Upon manifestation, the six consciousnesses must, on one hand, align with the mental activities of the manas, because the manas is the sovereign consciousness that governs the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses; on the other hand, they encounter new environments and are influenced by them. Just as water flowing through an area carries along impurities from its surroundings, becoming tainted, so too are the six consciousnesses influenced. As the environments encountered by the six consciousnesses differ, their bodily, verbal, and mental actions may also differ. Once influenced, the six consciousnesses, in turn, influence the manas.

For example, the six consciousnesses, originally tainted in mental activity, may suddenly encounter a wholesome condition, such as encountering the Buddha Dharma, and thus begin to learn and practice Buddhism. After learning the Dharma, understanding cause and effect, they know what should and should not be done. Then, the consciousness (mano-vijñāna) transmits the principles it has comprehended to the manas, enabling the manas to understand as well, thus influencing it. The bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses engaged in Buddhist practice are stored as seeds in the ālaya-vijñāna (storehouse consciousness). If the manas is influenced, its mental activities are also stored as seeds in the ālaya-vijñāna. The ālaya-vijñāna then delivers these seeds, causing them to manifest, and the bodily, verbal, and mental actions become aligned with Buddhist principles. In this way, the manas is influenced, the delivered seeds become pure, and the mental activities of the manas are transformed.

In this process, all bodily, verbal, and mental actions are decisively governed by the manas. The ālaya-vijñāna stores the karmic seeds of bodily, verbal, and mental actions, and the manas also plays a decisive role as the link or relay station between the ālaya-vijñāna and the six consciousnesses. The manas is a crucial hub for the ālaya-vijñāna in both storing and delivering karmic seeds. Because the manas has a relatively inferior discernment regarding specific sense objects (the six dusts), it cannot perform detailed discernment of them. The specific discernments made by the six consciousnesses are transmitted to the manas instant by instant, enabling the manas to discern what the six consciousnesses have discerned. The manas then gives rise to the mental factor of deliberation, deciding how to act. These decisions may be made according to the habitual tendencies of the manas itself or based on the analysis of the six consciousnesses; this is uncertain.

The manas may follow its habits or make choices based on newly acquired knowledge, newly discerned information, or principles analyzed by the six consciousnesses. Which factor dominates—whether it is one's own habits or the newly acquired principles from the six consciousnesses—is uncertain. The manas may integrate both, follow its own habits, or adhere to the principles analyzed by the six consciousnesses. After the manas deliberates and makes a choice, the ālaya-vijñāna discerns its mental activities and generates the six consciousnesses, which then initiate bodily, verbal, and mental actions according to the content deliberated by the manas and its mental activities. How bodily, verbal, and mental actions are performed is crucially determined by the deliberation and choice of the manas.

Moreover, after the manas discerns the information discerned by the six consciousnesses, how it deliberates, what choices it makes, what mental activities arise, and whether those mental activities are defiled or pure—all these are accurately recorded by the ālaya-vijñāna, which stores the seeds of these mental activities. The ālaya-vijñāna also brings back all mental activities of the manas, whether wholesome or unwholesome, into itself to be stored as seeds. What are the mental activities of the manas? One is the original habits; another is the influence of the discernments made by the six consciousnesses upon the manas. That is to say, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses are also stored in the ālaya-vijñāna via the manas. Within these bodily, verbal, and mental actions, whatever mental activities the six consciousnesses exhibit, the ālaya-vijñāna records and stores them; whatever mental activities the seventh consciousness (manas) exhibits, the ālaya-vijñāna records and stores them—with complete accuracy, without the slightest omission. Furthermore, this storage occurs simultaneously, instant by instant, without missing any part of the process. Once everything is stored, the entire event is preserved as karmic seeds.