Eliminating the Self-View of the Mind Consciousness as Self (V)

There is also a mind consciousness that arises together with the nose consciousness—the consciousness that smells odors together with the nose consciousness. He can discern the nature, source, category, and degree of an odor, whether it is harmful or not, and its effects on oneself and the environment, and He can also think about how to handle it and how to deal with it. The arising of this mind consciousness requires many more conditions: there must be external scent-objects (gandha), whether pleasant fragrances, foul smells, or any other kind of odor—in any case, this scent-object must arise. There must also be the manas, the eighth consciousness, the mind consciousness's own seeds, the nose faculty, and the nose consciousness. Only with these causal and conditional factors can our mind consciousness manifest and perform its discerning function.

Once the mind consciousness has manifested, it can know what object this odor emanates from, what kind of odor it is, what variety it belongs to, how fragrant or how foul it is, and how far away it is from us. Then it gives rise to delight, to aversion, and to various feelings and experiences, and it analyzes, plans, judges, deliberates, and reasons about this scent-object. All these functions are the operation of the mind consciousness. For the mind consciousness to arise, the eighth consciousness is the cause, and various kinds of conditions are also needed. Only when these causes and conditions gather together can the mind consciousness be born, and only afterward can a whole series of mental activities—discernment, reasoning, judgment, deliberation, and so on—take place. Therefore, this mind consciousness is constantly arising and ceasing; it lacks self-mastery (avaśatā), it is not autonomous, it is illusory and impermanent—it is fundamentally not the self.