The Distinction Between the First Five Consciousnesses and the Sixth Consciousness

The distinction between the first five consciousnesses and the sixth consciousness is as follows: The sixth consciousness often operates together with the first five consciousnesses in the process of discrimination, giving rise to mental activities such as analysis, thinking, reasoning, judgment, perception, investigation, and so forth. The five consciousnesses discern the coarse aspects of the five dusts (objects), while the sixth consciousness discerns their subtle aspects. When the sixth consciousness discriminates without the first five consciousnesses, it is called independent consciousness. The sixth consciousness engaged in wandering thoughts is independent consciousness; the sixth consciousness pondering over past and future matters is independent consciousness; the mental activities of consciousness in dreams are independent consciousness. For example, when looking at a person, the consciousness analyzes and discerns that this person possesses temperament, cultivation, culture, and virtue; it discerns the approximate age of this person, whether male or female, and their personality, temperament, and disposition—all of these are contents discerned by the sixth consciousness.

Generally, consciousness operates together with the five consciousnesses to discern the five dusts. The five consciousnesses discriminate the coarse aspects of form, sound, smell, taste, and touch, while consciousness discriminates the subtle aspects of form, sound, smell, taste, and touch. These subtle aspects are called dharma dust. For instance, when the eye faculty contacts a form dust, the eighth consciousness generates eye consciousness. When the mental faculty contacts the dharma dust upon the form dust, the eighth consciousness generates consciousness. Then, eye consciousness and consciousness together discriminate the form dust, thus enabling clear discernment of what the form dust is. For example, when looking at an electric rice cooker, eye consciousness knows its color, while consciousness knows its shape, age, quality, specific size, construction, material, and so on. In reality, seeing form with the eyes is accomplished jointly by eye consciousness and consciousness. It is not that the eye faculty possessing the nature of seeing alone enables one to see things. Although a dead person still has eye faculties, they lack eye consciousness and consciousness, so a dead person cannot see forms. When seeing forms, what discriminates information such as color, brightness, darkness, and so forth is eye consciousness. Beyond that, the conscious mind that discriminates the object's size, squareness or roundness, length, and other dharma dust is the consciousness mind.