The Five Names of the Manas and Their Meanings (II)

Original text: Fourth, it is called the Consciousness of Discernment (智识), meaning it discriminates defiled and pure, and the various differentiated dharmas.

Explanation: The fourth name of the manas is the Consciousness of Discernment, which can discriminate all dharmas, defiled and pure, such as wholesome and unwholesome, true and false, and can distinguish the specific characteristics of all dharmas. The Awakening of Faith says the manas is the Consciousness of Discernment, and this is absolutely correct. A sovereign consciousness represents the root of sentient beings and determines everything about them. If the sovereign consciousness of the five-aggregate body did not have such wisdom, then the five aggregates would have no wisdom, and there would be no wise people in the world. To say that the manas has inferior wisdom is not entirely correct. When discriminating dharma-objects that are excessively specific and subtle, the manas is indeed inferior to the mind consciousness, and that is why the mind consciousness is needed. But once the manas has the ability to discriminate subtle dharma-objects, the mind consciousness and the five sense consciousnesses become useless; the manas itself directly replaces the functions of the six consciousnesses—relying on the faculties rather than the consciousnesses—and then there are not so many troubles and not so many obstructions, and great supernatural powers manifest.

Original text: Fifth, it is called the Consciousness of Continuity (相续识), meaning it constantly engages in attention (manaskāra) without interruption in correspondence; it sustains past wholesome and unwholesome karma so that it is not lost or destroyed; it ripens present and future retributions of suffering and happiness so that they do not transgress; things already experienced are suddenly recollected, while things not yet experienced are falsely discriminated.

Explanation: The fifth name of the manas is the Consciousness of Continuity. The manas is called the Consciousness of Continuity because the five universal mental factors of the manas operate in perpetual continuity without interruption, and the ālayavijñāna, following the manas, continuously produces all dharmas and operates all dharmas, so that the world of the five aggregates appears in continuous succession—this life ceases, the next life arises, birth following birth without end. In this way, all dharmas, wholesome and unwholesome, defiled and pure, continuously manifest following the manas; wholesome and unwholesome karma is never severed, and the retributions of wholesome and unwholesome karma are not lost or destroyed. Moreover, the manas can ripen the present and future retributions of suffering and happiness without violating the principles of cause and effect. The events the manas has experienced life after life, through beginningless kalpas, will suddenly be recollected when conditions exist, and events not yet experienced will also be falsely discriminated.

Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa said that the manas can sustain wholesome and unwholesome karma, not allowing the karmic seeds to be lost or destroyed, and can ripen karmic retribution. This meaning is extremely profound and its significance extremely great. The bodily, verbal, and mental actions created by the six consciousnesses are, first, stored as seeds into the ālayavijñāna, held and contained by the ālayavijñāna; second, sustained by the manas and carried into future lives. What does "sustain" mean? To sustain means to shoulder, to bear, to take responsibility for karmic actions.

Why must karmic actions be borne and taken responsibility for by the manas? Because the manas is the sovereign consciousness, the ruler of the five-aggregate body, the master and originator of all karmic actions; the six consciousnesses only play an assisting, cooperating role and are not the master. And the ālayavijñāna is even less the master of karmic actions—it does not make decisions or create karma—so after karma is created, all karmic actions are the responsibility of the manas, which bears the karmic retribution. The six consciousnesses cannot bear karmic actions even if they wish: first, they do not make the decisions; second, they perish at death and cannot carry karmic seeds into future lives. Since all dharmas are created under the manas's sovereign decision-making, the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of karmic actions reflects the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of the manas. The manas is fully endowed with wholesome and unwholesome mental factors, which correspond to karmic actions and karmic seeds, and it carries these wholesome and unwholesome mental factors into future lives. Therefore, cultivation is the cultivation of the manas—steeping and transforming the manas, changing the manas.

The manas can also ripen the karmic retributions of wholesome and unwholesome, suffering and happiness, in correspondence with cause and effect. Someone may ask: Is it not the ālayavijñāna that ripens karmic retribution? The ālayavijñāna can only manifest and actualize ripened karmic seeds and realize karmic retribution; it does not ripen karmic retribution and karmic seeds. Only when karmic conditions are complete and the karmic seeds are ripened can the ālayavijñāna manifest the ripened karmic seeds, and only then does karmic retribution appear. Ripening karmic seeds and karmic retribution is not the business of the ālayavijñāna but of the manas. The manas has karma following it, and when external conditions manifest, karmic retribution appears.

Here the Awakening of Faith says the manas has the function of recollection, and this statement is extremely correct, because the manas is also a mind, and an extremely important mind at that, playing an extremely important role. The manas has experienced all dharmas, and having experienced them, it can of course recollect them, and it will prompt the mind consciousness to rely on this recollection to recall the past. Therefore it is said that the manas has the mental factor of mindfulness (smṛti) and will recollect and be mindful of all dharmas. Only the master of all dharmas would be mindful of and recollect them; when wanting to deal with something, the master summons the assistant to handle it concretely. The assistant does not appear constantly; it can only appear when the master needs it, and when the master does not need it, it does not manifest.

The meanings of the dharma behind the five names of the manas are very profound and contain a great deal of information, overturning many people's old, unreasonable understandings of the manas, as well as overturning the understandings of Yogācāra treatise masters ancient and modern. After all, the dharma meanings of the manas belong to the domain of the seed-wisdom (bīja-jñāna) of Yogācāra; those without Yogācāra realization cannot observe the manas through direct perception, so misunderstanding is inevitable. In history, the first bodhisattva attaining the first bhūmi to be certified by the World-Honored One and recorded in sources was Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna, next was Bodhisattva Asaṅga, and then Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa. It is said that Ānanda also entered the first bhūmi, only he did not transmit the dharma of Yogācāra. Among the Chan school, there may have been other patriarchs who entered the first bhūmi but did not transmit the Yogācāra dharma; it is only that upon first entering the bhūmi, their seed-wisdom of Yogācāra was not deep and their power of observation of Yogācāra was not strong, so they could not yet transmit the Yogācāra dharma.

Apart from these, among others who transmitted the Yogācāra dharma, there is no evidence proving they had the realization of first-bhūmi bodhisattvas, so the Yogācāra treatises they wrote all have flaws and errors; their dharma meanings are not entirely correct and can only serve as reference, not to be accepted in full. Among Yogācāra treatises, the Great Vehicle Awakening of Faith written by Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa has an extremely high level of realization; it can truthfully observe the mental factors of the manas. Its translator, Bodhisattva Śikṣānanda, also had a very high level of realization, and the translation is precise, in accord with reason and truth. This is a Yogācāra treatise worthy of trust.