Why Does the Phenomenon of Sheng-Linked Gratitude and Dou-Linked Enmity Arise?

When a person first receives a small kindness, their conscience naturally feels gratitude. However, when they are continuously showered with favors, it becomes habitual, leading them into a comfortable state where such kindness is taken for granted, fostering dependency. When this sense of entitlement is disrupted—when others cease their generosity, the comfort vanishes, and the dependency is removed—the person feels unsettled and psychologically unable to accept it. Consequently, resentment arises. Breaking a person's habit is difficult; denying them dependency breeds resentment. People resist abandoning habits, especially those that bring comfort and pleasure. They are also reluctant to accept teachings that significantly contradict their ingrained habits and beliefs. To change a person, one must proceed gradually, avoiding undue haste.

Since habits possess such tenacity, one must strive to cultivate wholesome habits to displace unwholesome ones. For instance, when observing the breath becomes habitual, it dispels distracting thoughts. When the mind wanders, focusing on the breath concentrates all the mental energy on respiration; concentration arises, and distracting thoughts vanish. Gradually adapting to receiving favors forms a dependency rooted in the manas (the underlying mind). The manas is prone to greed and laziness; forming unwholesome habits is easy, but changing them is difficult. Accepting benefits is easy, yet bearing their loss is hard.

Which mind feels gratitude? Which mind turns hostile? Love, hatred, affection, and enmity all depend on the level and degree to which they manifest—whether they are genuine or false, and to what extent. Deeper emotions belong to the manas, while shallower ones, not yet solidified into habits, belong to the conscious mind (consciousness). Emotions are easier to regulate at the conscious level. Once they sink into the manas and become habitual, emotions become difficult to control.

Upon receiving kindness, anyone with a shred of conscience feels gratitude, constantly remembering it and intending to repay it when able—both the conscious mind and the manas operate this way. If the conscious mind must repeatedly remind the manas to feel grateful, it indicates the manas lacks conscience. A person with conscience needs no such reminders from the conscious mind. It is like someone who attains the fruit (of enlightenment) through consciousness: they must constantly remind the manas to avoid afflictions and refrain from clinging to the five aggregates, knowing these are illusory. Yet when the manas itself attains the fruit, there is no need for the conscious mind to repeatedly remind it; the conscious mind need not speak or reiterate the falsity of the five aggregates—the manas simply knows.