Do the First Five Consciousnesses Have the Mental Factor of Mindfulness (smṛti)?

Answer: All dharmas can be stored as seeds. All bodily, verbal, and mental actions, and everything experienced—people, events, objects, and principles, that is, the entire realm of the six sense-objects—are all stored by the tathāgatagarbha as seeds. Afterwards, when the manas grasps at them and deliberates and wishes to discern them, the tathāgatagarbha, in accordance with the manas's mental factor of volition (cetanā), transmits the seeds outward, where they become mental sense-objects, becoming Image-Only Objects. After the manas has taken them as object, if it wishes to discern them in detail, the tathāgatagarbha gives rise to the solitary mental consciousness to discern them one by one—this is what is called recollection. Therefore recollection contains details; the realms brought up in recollection belong to mental sense-objects, which the five sense consciousnesses cannot discern. The object-aspects of the five sense-objects are also stored in the tathāgatagarbha as seeds and as a kind of information; seeds and information are formless and without appearance, and do not belong to the realm of the five sense-objects. When the causes and conditions are complete, the tathāgatagarbha, in accordance with the seeds, also outputs the five sense-objects; then, in accordance with the manas's mental factor of volition, the tathāgatagarbha gives rise to the six consciousnesses to discern them—but this no longer counts as recollection. The five sense consciousnesses also possess the five universal-object mental factors: desire (chanda), determination (adhimokṣa), mindfulness (smṛti), meditative concentration (samādhi), and wisdom (prajñā). Therefore the five sense consciousnesses do have the mental factor of mindfulness.