The Innate Ego-Clinging of the Mental Faculty and the Afflictions of Greed, Hatred, and Delusion

Question: Innate ego-grasping is formed from beginningless time through false habitual tendencies into seeds and continuously corresponds with the mental faculty. However, consciousness is new in each lifetime and cannot correspond with memories from past lives. Logically, it stands to reason that innate ego-grasping should not exist. Yet, conscious thought is influenced by the habitual tendencies of the mental faculty. For example: upon encountering an enemy from a past life, the mind of consciousness gives rise to anger without knowing the reason. It is still the mental faculty clinging to karmic seeds from past lives that induces consciousness to generate anger.

Answer: "Innate" means present from birth. Innate ego-grasping and innate afflictions refer to the mental faculty's inherent afflictions such as greed, hatred, delusion, arrogance, etc., and the habit-energy of grasping at self carried since beginningless kalpas. Therefore, the mental faculty corresponds with karmic seeds. Whatever seeds were stored through actions created since beginningless kalpas, the mental faculty manifests corresponding mental formations, and it can cause seeds to become active, dominating consciousness to produce mental formations corresponding to the karmic seeds.

Moreover, the mental faculty is not born with the birth of a life; it exists accompanying each life period and every life form. It is present with life, hence called "innate." Also, because the mental faculty, obscured by ignorance since beginningless kalpas, has continuously grasped the five aggregates as self and as belonging to self, it is called innate ego-grasping.

Consciousness lacks innateness. The consciousness of a newborn infant, even in the womb, is newly born and entirely fresh, carrying no afflictions or habitual tendencies from past lives or beginningless kalpas. Regarding all dharmas in this life, it must learn anew to master them, though the degree and speed of mastery are still related to karmic seeds accumulated over lifetimes, influenced and facilitated by the mental faculty and karmic seeds. On one hand, consciousness is influenced by the living environment of this life, giving rise to wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral mental factors according to conditions. On the other hand, it is influenced by the mental faculty: when the mental faculty is virtuous, so is consciousness; when it is unvirtuous, consciousness follows suit.

Therefore, when the mental faculty gives rise to afflictions of greed, hatred, or delusion, often without conscious deliberation or choice, it dominates consciousness to inexplicably produce mental formations of greed, hatred, and delusion, creating karmic actions of these afflictions. The rationality of consciousness sometimes cannot function as it should. When karmic seeds are about to become active, when the emotions and habitual tendencies of the mental faculty are about to manifest, even if consciousness possesses rationality, it struggles to withstand them. Moreover, since the consciousness of the vast majority of people lacks rationality, the afflictions will then run rampant.