The Coordinating Relationship between Mind Consciousness and Manas

Ru Chun: The manas creates a dream, yet the mind consciousness cannot figure out its meaning for a long time. Is this mainly due to the mind consciousness's insufficient capacity to receive, or the manas's poor ability to give feedback?

Reply: There are mainly two reasons for the poor communication between the manas and the mind consciousness: First, the manas itself lacks wisdom, so in dreams, in meditative concentration, and in other situations, the realms it displays are not quite apt or appropriate, with vague and unclear meanings; second, the mind consciousness lacks wisdom and cannot fully understand the meaning and direction of the realms displayed by the manas, unable to see through the manas's intentions. In at least one of the two, wisdom is insufficient; sometimes, and in some people, both the manas and the mind consciousness have very weak wisdom, which is often caused by meager merit (alpa-puṇya).

Ru Chun: After reading the article "The Experience of Learning to Use the Manas" written by a fellow practitioner, I, your disciple, believe that the wisdom arising in many dharmas is the result of the joint cooperation of the mind consciousness and the manas. Reason one: when wisdom arises from the manas's solitary deliberation (manasikāra), if the manas wants the mind consciousness to know something, with a single act of attention (manaskāra) in the mind, the mind consciousness immediately knows it, without words. For example, when the manas hands over its answer to a question to the mind consciousness, no words or text are needed—it is as if with a snap, the mind consciousness just knows. The feeling is like someone describing a picture to you: after imagining for a long time you can only get a rough idea, but if he directly unfolds the painting and shows it to you, you understand it all at once. How exactly it is transmitted, the mind consciousness does not know, and it assumes it is its own sudden flash of inspiration. But to fully receive and comprehend the content received, the mind consciousness needs wisdom and the power of determination (adhimokṣa).

Assessment: The manas transmits the dharma it has deliberated upon to the mind consciousness so that the mind consciousness understands it. This process is the manas contacting the mental sense-objects (dharma-viṣaya); through attention (manaskāra), the mind consciousness arises upon the dharma, and in an instant the five universal mental factors (pañca-sarvatraga-caitasika) begin to operate, and the mind consciousness understands the dharma pushed out by the manas. The five universal mental factors appear to be five stages of the operation of the conscious mind; in reality they are extremely fast—one cannot perceive that there is a process—but no matter how fast, it is still called a process. When the mind consciousness lacks wisdom and has poor comprehension, there will be a momentary hesitation; with even less wisdom, the hesitation lengthens, and it will keep pondering and mulling; with even less wisdom, it will ponder for a very long time without understanding, wanting to speak but stopping, stammering and unable to express clearly.

Ru Chun: The manas's deliberation and modes of expression are often simple, direct, true, commanding, rich, broad in scope, and unrestrained, free from limitation (and therefore capable of innovation); it can only be intuited, not conveyed in words, just as Master previously said, "Thousands of words are contained in silence." The mind consciousness's thousands of words cannot match the manas's wordless artistic conception, dreams, and situations (such as: hair turning white overnight, embracing and weeping, etc.). But if the manas feels that a certain occasion and time require expression through language and words, He will let the six consciousnesses speak thousands of words.

Assessment: The manas can only be intuited, not conveyed in words. Although the manas cannot speak, the dharmas contained in the manas's mind and heart are too many, the information content too vast, the significance too profound, yet the manas can transmit dharmas with such an enormous amount of information clearly and plainly to the mind consciousness in an instant; the result then depends on the mind consciousness's capacity to receive and to express. Sometimes even if the mind consciousness's receptivity is very good, expressing it may require thousands of words, which is very troublesome, and it may still not be expressed clearly. Because this is not a dharma the mind consciousness deliberated upon itself; when speaking of another's affairs, one inevitably cannot quite explain it clearly. And the thousands of words the mind consciousness wants to say are all within the heart of the manas, which cannot speak; therefore the manas's mind holds a highly condensed, extremely concise meaning—simple, direct, and clean-cut.

Ru Chun put this well: the mind consciousness's thousands of words cannot match the manas's wordless artistic conception, situations, and dreams; these realms are designed so that the mind consciousness may understand them. For a single realm, the mind consciousness would need thousands of words to describe and express it, and perhaps even then it might not be expressed clearly and fully.

Ru Chun: Reason two: the manas's functions are powerful, but many of His thoughts and wisdom require the mind consciousness to have matching wisdom in order to correctly understand their meaning and intention, and then express them through concrete dharmas, so that principle and affairs can be perfectly harmonized. This is what we often say: keep lofty aspirations in the heart while keeping feet on solid ground. If only the manas has high wisdom while the wisdom of the six consciousnesses is all low, the manas may feel frustrated and stifled. Therefore both the manas and the mind consciousness must have wisdom, mutually communicating and mutually knowing, with a high degree of matching, so that their hearts are linked and connected at a single point. I wonder if this understanding is correct.

Assessment: The wisdom displayed in this passage is quite good, but the language is not sufficiently complete, and the wording is not precise enough. We sentient beings all take the mind consciousness's knowing as our knowing; only after the mind consciousness knows can it process and act together with the five sense consciousnesses. Therefore, when the manas has ideas and thoughts, it needs the mind consciousness to know and implement them; naturally, the more wisdom the mind consciousness has, the better it can correctly understand and comprehend the manas's intentions and thoughts, and only then can it correctly and reasonably carry them out through bodily, verbal, and mental actions. Therefore, the wisdom of these two conscious minds—the manas and the mind consciousness—must match each other; otherwise, if the two communicate poorly and affairs are handled poorly, one or both parties will feel depressed and helpless.