The Correspondence Between Manas and Karmic Seeds in Sentient Beings

The sentient beings' manas invariably corresponds to their karmic seeds. When in the hell realm, the manas manifests the habits of hell beings. When in the realm of hungry ghosts, beings inevitably exhibit the habits of hungry ghosts. When in the animal realm, beings inevitably display the habits of animals. In the human realm, they possess human habits; as devas, they have the habits of devas; as asuras, they possess the habits of asuras. Similarly, bodhisattvas have the habits of bodhisattvas. Having taught sentient beings across countless kalpas, bodhisattvas inevitably carry the habit of instructing beings—a habit that is, of course, virtuous. When sentient beings resonate with the habits of bodhisattvas, they become bodhisattvas themselves.

If beings spent prolonged periods in a particular realm in their past lives, they acquire the habits of beings from that realm. Upon rebirth into another realm, their manas correspondingly manifests these former habits. For instance, the Buddha's great disciple, Gavāṃpati, a fourth-stage arhat, had been an ox for five hundred lifetimes in his past. He retained the rumination habit, and even as a human arhat, he ate "like an ox chewing grass." Some people exhibit the habits of hungry ghosts due to extended periods as pretas in past lives. Others display the combative habits of asuras, having spent long periods as asuras, where their resentment and ingrained habits of anger became deeply entrenched. Even after becoming bodhisattvas, they may still manifest some residual anger habits characteristic of asuras.