The Types of All Dharmas

Bodhisattva Vasubandhu stated in the Mahāyāna Hundred Dharmas Treatise (百法明门论)： 一切法者略有五种，First, the mind dharmas: the eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, mind consciousness, manas, and the eighth consciousness — eight consciousnesses in total. Second, the mental factors (caittas), fifty-one in brief: the five universal factors (sarvatraga), the five object-specific factors, the eleven wholesome dharmas, the six fundamental afflictions (mūla-kleśa), the twenty derivative afflictions (upakleśa), and the four indeterminate ones (avyākṛta). Third, the material dharmas (rūpa), eleven in brief: the five material faculties, the five sense-objects, and the form included in the dharma base (dharmāyatana). Fourth, the conditionings disassociated from mind (citta-viprayukta-saṃskāra), twenty-four in brief. Fifth, the unconditioned dharmas (asaṃskṛta), six in brief: unconditioned space, unconditioned selective cessation (pratisaṃkhyā-nirodha), unconditioned non-selective cessation (apratisaṃkhyā-nirodha), the immovable unconditioned (āniñjya), the unconditioned cessation of perception and feeling (saṃjñā-veditā-nirodha), and the unconditioned suchness (tathatā).

The eleven material dharmas include: the five faculties, the five sense-objects, and the form included in the dharma base. The five faculties are the eye faculty, ear faculty, nose faculty, tongue faculty, and body faculty; the five sense-objects are the form objects, sound objects, smell objects, taste objects, and touch objects. The first five faculties are material faculties (rūpa-indriya), composed of the four great element seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind; they are also called the superficial faculties, located on the surface of the body, facing sentient beings' eye faculty, visible to sentient beings, and thus belong to material form. The five supreme faculties (indriya) located at the back of the brain are also composed of the four great element seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind, and belong to material form; the nature of the five faculties is that of arising and ceasing, mutability, impermanence, and not-self. The five sense-objects are composed of the four great element seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind; they face sentient beings' eye faculty and can be seen by sentient beings' eye faculty, and therefore belong to material form; they too are of the nature of arising and ceasing, mutability, impermanence, and not-self.

As for the form included in the dharma base\: upon the five sense-objects, the mental objects (dharma-viṣaya) of those five sense-objects manifest simultaneously; these also belong to material form and are called the form included in the dharma base; they too are composed of the four great element seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind. The mental objects manifest in dependence upon the five sense-objects and face the manas; the manas grasps at and contacts them, and the mind consciousness specifically discerns them; they too are of the nature of arising and ceasing, mutability, impermanence, and not-self. After the manas contacts the mental objects upon the five sense-objects, the tathāgatagarbha produces the mind consciousness, which can then recognize the mental objects. That is to say, at that time the mind consciousness, together with the first five consciousnesses, discerns the five sense-objects: the five consciousnesses discern the coarse forms of the five sense-objects, while the mind consciousness simultaneously discerns the subtle mental objects upon the five sense-objects; what the five consciousnesses discern is coarse, and what the mind consciousness discerns is subtle. The above is an extremely brief summary; if explained in detail, it would have to be divided into inner faculties, outer faculties, inner sense-objects, outer sense-objects, inner mental objects, outer mental objects, and so on — the content is extremely complex.