The Manifestations of Manas Samādhi

Samādhi (meditative concentration) means not moving, or moving little, or moving slowly, or ceasing. Movement means the arising and operation of bodily, verbal, and mental actions; not moving means bodily, verbal, and mental actions do not operate; moving little means operating little; moving slowly means bodily, verbal, and mental actions operate slowly and weakly; ceasing means the stopping and disappearance of bodily, verbal, and mental actions.

Who directs and decides all these states of movement, non-movement, little movement, slow movement, and cessation? Apart from the manas, there is no other. The mind consciousness does not have this function, and the five consciousnesses even less so. The eighth consciousness follows the arrangements of the manas and never stirs up trouble without cause or goes looking for something to do.

When the mind consciousness has subdued the manas, the manas becomes settled, its propensity for grasping at objects diminishes, the dharmas it grasps at gradually decrease, so that in terms of mental activity it prefers fewer things over more, reduces its fabrications, extinguishes some mental activities and fabrications, and no longer wields the baton, directing the eighth consciousness on one side and the first six consciousnesses on the other, busying itself to the point of not knowing what it is doing.

In this way, bodily actions and fabrications decrease, slow down, and lighten: the eyes do not look, the ears do not listen, the nose does not smell, the tongue does not taste, the body does not touch, the four limbs do not move, the head does not move; finally all external bodily actions completely stop and the five consciousnesses cease. When one cultivates to the fourth dhyāna, the manas no longer wishes to control the material body and no longer clings to the body, so it no longer wants the material body to move; thus breathing stops, the heartbeat stops, and the pulse stops, just like a dead person. However, because the manas still does not want to extinguish its capacity to know and still wants to know, the mind consciousness does not cease and still has the capacity to know, only that this capacity to know has become very weak, moving extremely slowly and sluggishly.

With regard to verbal actions, the voice becomes softer and softer, slower and slower, lower and lower, fainter and fainter, until finally it disappears and there is silence. Even to make a little more sound, the manas is unwilling, and the mind consciousness feels very, very tired, so the manas decides to stop making sounds.

With regard to mental actions, from the initial scattering of deluded thoughts, thoughts gradually decrease and become unified, and finally weaken and disappear, leaving only a single awareness; the power of introspection (pratyavekṣā-bala) disappears, and finally even the awareness and the power of introspection vanish, entering the samādhi of no perception (asaṃjñi-samāpatti). After the samādhi of no perception, the manas no longer wants to receive and perceive sense objects, so it extinguishes two mental factors and enters the samādhi of cessation (nirodha-samāpatti). From this it can be seen that samādhi primarily means the samādhi of the manas; it is useless to concentrate only the six consciousnesses. Whatever the manas wants the six consciousnesses to do, the six consciousnesses must do; whatever it wants the six consciousnesses to discern, the six consciousnesses must discern; however much it wants the six consciousnesses to discern, the six consciousnesses must discern that much; to whatever degree it wants the six consciousnesses to discern, the six consciousnesses must discern to that degree—what autonomy do the six consciousnesses have? If the six consciousnesses want samādhi but the manas does not, the six consciousnesses must fabricate; if the manas does not want to sleep, the six consciousnesses must work—they absolutely cannot escape the baton of the manas. Without subduing the manas, how can there be samādhi, how can one attain samādhi? Cultivating samādhi has only this one gateway, and there is no other path. Samādhi is the samādhi of the manas!