Why Can One Mind Not Serve Two Purposes at Once

Answer: The worldly saying that "one mind cannot attend to two things at once" means that if one mind is applied to two or more uses, the application will not be good—the energy is scattered, the mind becomes coarse, the discernment is not fine or clear, the thinking is unclear, and wisdom cannot emerge. In fact, the mind consciousness and the six consciousnesses can attend to two things and even three things at once. Because ordinary people have very poor meditative concentration and also very poor power of wisdom, their energy is slightly scattered and their discernment of the six sense objects becomes unclear; their consideration of problems is not meticulous or thorough, manifesting as carelessness, sloppiness, muddled confusion, not knowing why things are so—their wisdom is rather inferior.

When the mind consciousness has not been trained, if it wants to deliberate and consider something well, it must engage in focused, single-minded contemplation; otherwise it cannot think things through clearly. When the mind consciousness has been trained and has good meditative concentration, it can attend to multiple things with one mind, engaging with several dharmas simultaneously and doing all of them well. For example, as is said in worldly terms, "the eyes observe six directions and the ears listen to eight quarters"—it is just like this, only one cannot engage in too fine-grained contemplation, yet overall everything can be arranged well. For instance, when some people face a major event, they often appear very calm; at that moment all their energy and abilities are mobilized and brought into play, all matters are considered and arranged very thoroughly, the brain spins at high speed, and the working speed is astonishing. Worldly people at work are sometimes like this too; each person's energy and abilities differ greatly, and there are distinctions in both meditative concentration and wisdom.

The manas can engage with multiple dharmas simultaneously, and it can also engage with multiple dharmas in continuous succession, moment after moment without interruption. If He is to engage with dharmas among the six sense objects, the mind consciousness will inevitably discern them accordingly, so the mind consciousness is also capable of engaging with multiple dharmas. To distinguish between the mind consciousness and the manas, it is still easier to distinguish them in terms of the capacity to be the master and the capacity to make decisions; they are easy to distinguish in terms of habitual tendencies, inertia, and functions. When something happens suddenly, it is easy to distinguish the functions of the mind consciousness and the manas; and it is relatively easy to distinguish the mind consciousness and the manas in terms of shallow-level psychological functions versus deep-level psychological functions.