The Manas Is Obscured Yet Possesses the Three Attributes of Wholesome, Unwholesome, and Indeterminate

"With defilement yet neutral (有覆无记)": "defilement" means covering and obscuring. Who is the one with covering? It is the manas, the seventh consciousness. What does it cover? It covers the pure wisdom of the manas's own mind, preventing the mind from recognizing the truths, realities, and true characteristics of the Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna. Why does it have this covering function? Because of the ignorance and afflictions within its own mind. Therefore, because the manas has ignorance and afflictions, it leads to birth and death, the cycle of saṃsāra through the six realms. Since the manas has ignorance and afflictions and is also the consciousness that acts as the master, are the bodily, verbal, and mental actions created by the five-aggregate body created under the manas's direction? Of course they are created under the manas's direction. These bodily, verbal, and mental actions all manifest the mental activities and mental nature of the manas; unwholesome karma manifests the unwholesome mental factors and afflictive mental factors of the manas. So can the manas merely be a neutral mind that is neither wholesome nor unwholesome? Absolutely not. The manas has a wholesome mind, an unwholesome mind, and a mind that is neither wholesome nor unwholesome. The very root of cultivation is cultivating the manas. If the manas had no unwholesome mind, no afflictive mind, and no mind of ignorance, what would there be to cultivate? The six consciousnesses would then have no unwholesome mind, no afflictive mind, and no mind of ignorance either; in that case, even if sentient beings were not yet Buddhas, they would not be far from Buddhahood.

The claim that the manas has a "defiled yet neutral" nature does not come from the Buddhist sūtras, but from the treatises of the ancient Yogācāra masters. If one's wisdom has not reached the level of a bhūmi-attained bodhisattva, one cannot engage in direct contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) regarding the mental nature of the manas, because both meditative concentration and wisdom are insufficient. Therefore, being a Yogācāra master does not mean being a bhūmi-attained bodhisattva, nor does it mean possessing the wisdom of the varieties of paths and the seed-wisdom of Yogācāra that comes from direct contemplation of the profound Dharma of consciousness-only. Thus their treatises cannot be perfect, and it is not surprising that they have flaws.

I began teaching consciousness-only in 2016. At that time my wisdom was still rather coarse and shallow, and my understanding of the consciousness-only Dharma was not very thorough. Some people asked me questions about consciousness-only, excerpts taken from the Cheng Weishi Lun (Treatise on the Establishment of Consciousness-Only) and other treatises. At that time I was simply unable to think independently and engage in contemplative practice apart from those treatises, so I answered using those views as if they were absolutely correct. Later I gradually discovered some internal contradictions that could not be reconciled, and so I gradually abandoned the original treatises and engaged in contemplative practice on my own. I originally planned to expound the entire Cheng Weishi Lun, but after discovering these problems, I only explained a very few passages and then stopped, not continuing further. Because if I followed the treatises, I would err along with them and mislead people; if I did not follow them, I would be slandered for contradicting the treatises. Either way the outcome would be bad. In my earliest explanations of the consciousness-only Dharma, there were a few places where, following the Yogācāra treatises, I made errors; when re-editing the books, I have tried to correct them all.

The ancient Yogācāra treatises say that the manas has only neutral feeling (upekṣā-vedanā). I was already suspicious of this at the time, because by observing the feelings in body and mind, one finds contradictions that do not match reality. If the manas had only neutral feeling, then how peaceful and calm would a person's mind have to be—almost the same as the tathāgatagarbha—without emotions, without contending or grabbing, without striking back or taking revenge, without liking or disliking. Would such a mind still need cultivation? Could it still create unwholesome karma, even grave unwholesome karma?

The mental activities of the mind consciousness float on the surface; with a somewhat refined mind, they can be observed. Because observation is initially always done by the mind consciousness, and the mind consciousness easily observes and understands itself, it is said that the mind consciousness is relatively shallow, floating on the surface. The manas, however, is another consciousness distinct from the mind consciousness itself, so observing and understanding it is not so easy—it can be said to be extremely difficult. Without first-dhyāna concentration and without profound wisdom of consciousness-only, one cannot directly observe the mental activities of the manas. A person who has awakened can directly observe the coarse workings of the eighth consciousness, yet cannot observe the mental activities of the manas. So do not think that the manas is easy to observe and easy to understand.

Qingfeng: Secondary afflictions such as torpor and restlessness should be classified as defiled-yet-neutral in nature; although neutral, they obstruct the noble path. The ten minor secondary afflictions belong to afflictive habitual tendencies, dormant within the seventh consciousness, to be eliminated only after attaining the bhūmis; these should all be classified as defiled-yet-neutral. A while ago I saw a madman online using these points to attack Master's teachings, treating all the afflictions of the seventh consciousness as defiled-yet-neutral.

It seems that the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra defines self-view, self-love, self-conceit, and self-delusion as defiled-yet-neutral in nature. Take self-view, for example: taking my body as the real me—this is a wrong view (mithyā-dṛṣṭi), merely an erroneous opinion, and it obstructs the noble path, preventing us from eliminating self-view; it is understandable that this belongs to the defiled-yet-neutral category. But as for self-conceit: for instance, someone who does not believe in the Buddha reads a Buddhist sūtra, cannot understand it, and concludes it is a fraud, as if he were more brilliant than the Buddha himself—there are quite a few such people right now. This involves self-conceit, and it constitutes slandering the Buddha and the Buddha's Dharma, which should not be neutral. So "defiled-yet-neutral" should refer to those afflictive habitual tendencies that are relatively appropriate.

Assessment: Secondary afflictions are afflictive mental factors. Since they are afflictions, they are unwholesome—not wholesome, and not neither-wholesome-nor-unwholesome. How could they be neutral? Such plain, simple terms and concepts are very easy to understand; there is no possibility of confusion. Whether afflictions or afflictive habitual tendencies, they are all unwholesome—not wholesome, and not neutral. Likewise, conceit and delusion are both afflictive mental factors; they are unwholesome, not wholesome, and not neutral. In summary, the manas possesses all the wholesome and unwholesome mental factors; it does not have only the single attribute of neutrality.

Rutao: Most people only know how to recite books, and their emotional attachments are deep and heavy; once preconceived views have been implanted in them, they are very hard to turn around. Mencius said, "To believe everything in books is worse than having no books at all"—meaning to break people's blind faith in books. The principle in the Buddha's Dharma of "relying on the Dharma, not on persons," I personally feel, was also established precisely to address this enormous weakness in human nature.