How the Tathāgatagarbha Records Karmic Actions and Outputs Karmic Seeds (Part 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 out, the six consciousnesses become manifest. When the six consciousnesses manifest, on the one hand they must accord with the mental activities of the manas, because the manas is the master consciousness, capable of directing 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: the water carries along and mixes with the miscellaneous matter around that area, and thus the water is perfumed by it. When the environments encountered by the six consciousnesses differ, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions may differ as well. 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 they encounter a wholesome condition—they encounter the Buddha-dharma—and so they take up Buddhist practice and cultivation. After studying the Buddha-dharma, having understood cause and effect, they know what should be done and what should not be done. Then the mind consciousness transmits the principles it has understood to the manas, so that the manas also understands them; in this way the manas is perfumed. The bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses in studying Buddhism are stored as seeds in the tathāgatagarbha, and if the manas has been perfumed, its mental activities are also stored as seeds in the tathāgatagarbha. When the tathāgatagarbha transmits the seeds out again, the seeds become manifest, and the bodily, verbal, and mental actions accord with Buddhist principles. In this way the manas has been perfumed and transformed: the seeds transmitted out are pure, and the mental activities of the manas have changed.

In this process, the manas plays the decisive role in all bodily, verbal, and mental actions; likewise, the manas plays the decisive role in the tathāgatagarbha's storing of the karmic seeds of bodily, verbal, and mental actions. 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 hub. This is because the manas's discriminating wisdom regarding the specific six sense-objects is relatively weak; it 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) and decides how to act. These decisions may be made according to the manas's own habit-energies and inertia, or they may be made according to the analysis of the six consciousnesses—it is not certain.

The manas may follow its habit-energies, or it may make its choices according to the newly perfumed contents of the six consciousnesses, the newly discriminated information, and the analyzed principles. Which of these 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 certain. Perhaps the manas will make a synthesis; perhaps it will act according to its own habit-energies, or perhaps according to the principles analyzed by the six consciousnesses. After the manas has deliberated (manana) and made its choice, the tathāgatagarbha, discerning His mental activities, will give rise to the six consciousnesses, and the bodily, verbal, and mental actions will be carried out according to the content of the manas's deliberation and according to the manas's mental activities. How the bodily, verbal, and mental actions are carried out depends crucially on the manas's deliberation and choice.

Moreover, after the manas has finished processing the information discriminated by the six consciousnesses—how He deliberates, how He chooses, what mental activities He engages in, and whether those mental activities are defiled or pure—the tathāgatagarbha also makes a faithful record of them, storing the seeds of those mental activities. The tathāgatagarbha also takes all the mental activities of the manas—wholesome or unwholesome alike—back into the tathāgatagarbha, storing them as seeds. What, then, are the mental activities of the manas? One is its original habit-energies; the other is the influence upon the manas of the contents discriminated by the six consciousnesses. In other words, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses are also stored in the tathāgatagarbha through the manas. Whatever mental activities the six consciousnesses have in 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—quite faithfully, without the slightest omission. Moreover, the storing occurs simultaneously, moment by moment, without a single link being missed. Once everything has been stored, the entire event is stored as a karmic seed.