The Perfect Luminous Awareness of the Mental Faculty in the Cessation of Perception and Feeling

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra states: The World-Honored One said: "Those śrāvakas who attain the nirodha-samāpatti experience quiescence. Like Mahākāśyapa in this assembly: having long extinguished the manas-indriya, he perfectly and clearly knows all dharmas without relying on mental thought."

The nirodha-samāpatti is the ninth sequential samādhi, surpassing the four dhyānas and the eight samāpattis. Within the nirodha-samāpatti, not only are the six consciousnesses extinguished, but the two mental factors (caittas) of feeling and perception within the manas-indriya are also extinguished. However, the three mental factors of attention (manasikāra), contact (sparśa), and volition (cetanā) within the manas-indriya remain functioning. If all five universal mental factors of the manas-indriya were extinguished, then the physical body would cease to exist, the first seven consciousnesses would vanish, leaving only the eighth consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna). That would constitute entering parinirvāṇa without residue. The fourth-fruit arhats who enter the nirodha-samāpatti, having extinguished the six consciousnesses and the mental factors of feeling and perception within the manas-indriya, possess no sensory experience and no grasping nature toward the six sense objects. Thus, their minds attain stillness. Although only three mental factors remain, Mahākāśyapa was able to use these three mental factors to perfectly and clearly know all dharmas, thereby fulfilling the functions of the six consciousnesses without obstruction. Without the mental factor of recollection (smṛti) from the six consciousnesses, and without the mental factor of recollection from the manas-indriya, he did not need to activate mental thought; the manas-indriya itself perfectly and clearly knew all dharmas.