The Innate Self-Grasping and the Afflictions of Greed, Hatred, and Delusion of the Manas

Question: Innate self-grasping arises from seeds formed through false habitual conditioning since beginningless time and remains continuously conjoined with the manas. But the mind consciousness is new in each life and cannot connect with memories from past lives; logically, it should not possess innate self-grasping. Yet the thinking of the mind consciousness is drawn by the habitual tendencies of the manas. For example: upon seeing an enemy from a past life, hatred arises in the mind consciousness, without knowing the reason. Is it still the manas that grasps at and brings forth the karmic seeds of past lives, drawing the mind consciousness to give rise to hatred?

Answer: "Innate" (sahaja) means present from birth. Innate self-grasping and innate afflictions both refer to the afflictions such as greed, hatred, delusion, and arrogance with which the manas is endowed from birth—the habitual tendency of grasping at self that has been carried along since beginningless kalpas. Therefore, the manas corresponds with karmic seeds: whatever kinds of seeds have been created and stored since beginningless kalpas, the manas manifests corresponding mental activities, and it can impel the seeds to become manifest, and can direct the mental activities of the mind consciousness to correspond with the karmic seeds.

Moreover, the manas does not arise with the birth of a life; it exists throughout every period of life and every form of life, coexisting with life itself—this is called "innate." And because the manas, obscured by ignorance since beginningless kalpas, has constantly grasped the five aggregates as self and as belonging to self, it is called innate self-grasping.

The mind consciousness has no innate quality. When an infant is newly born—even the consciousness within the mother's womb is newly arisen and brand new, carrying no afflictions or habitual tendencies from past lives or from beginningless kalpas. Everything in this life must be learned anew in order to be mastered; only the degree and speed of mastery are still related to the karmic seeds accumulated over many lifetimes, being conditioned and facilitated by the manas and the karmic seeds. On the one hand, the mind consciousness is conditioned by the living environment of this life, giving rise in accordance with conditions to mental factors that are wholesome or unwholesome, and those that are neither wholesome nor unwholesome; on the other hand, it is conditioned by the manas: if the manas is wholesome, the mind consciousness is wholesome; if the manas is unwholesome, the mind consciousness is unwholesome.

Therefore, when the manas gives rise to afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, often without allowing the mind consciousness any say or choice, the manas will direct the mind consciousness to inexplicably give rise to mental activities of greed, hatred, and delusion, creating karmic actions of greed, hatred, and delusion, and the rationality of the mind consciousness sometimes cannot play its due role. When karmic seeds are about to become manifest, when the emotions and habitual tendencies of the manas are about to manifest, even if the mind consciousness possesses rationality, it can hardly withstand them—let alone the fact that for the vast majority of people, the mind consciousness has no rationality at all, and then the afflictions will run rampant.