Consciousness Habit-Energy and the Direct Realization of Manas

Consciousness constantly permeates the mental faculty (manas) in order to alter its inherent cognitions and concepts. While consciousness finds it easy to understand all dharmas, the true difficulty lies in the mental faculty's comprehension and cognition. Changing the mental faculty's concepts is exceedingly challenging. Once the mental faculty's concepts are transformed, attaining the fruit (of enlightenment) becomes readily attainable; realizing the mind and perceiving true nature, as well as achieving various contemplative practices, also become readily attainable. Once the mental faculty attains the fruit, its thoughts and concepts transform instantaneously.

The precondition is consciousness's understanding followed by its permeation of the mental faculty. The subsequent, and indeed the primary, task is to enable the mental faculty itself to personally investigate and deliberate, after which it can directly realize the truth. Without this precondition, it remains merely intellectual understanding.

As the ancient saying goes: "A three-year-old can speak of it, but an eighty-year-old cannot accomplish it." Some may speak with the realization of a Buddha, adopting a Buddha's level of realization as their own, yet when one genuinely realizes and accomplishes it oneself, one has already become a Buddha. The meaning is that understanding the matter is very easy, but genuine realization is extremely difficult. Hence, sages are rare, exceedingly rare. It is not as some suppose, that merely reading a couple of books and engaging in some understanding causes a sage to suddenly emerge.