The Function of Deliberation and Discernment of the Manas

The manas's nature of constant and deliberate thinking has operated in this way since beginningless kalpas. He is always attached to the existence of a self, constantly deliberating on what is most beneficial to the self, how to achieve His own goals, and how to satisfy His own wishes. He forever weighs all dharmas He encounters, deliberating on how to accept or reject them. After deliberating, He decides what to accept or reject and then acts. However, He needs the six consciousnesses as tools to act; the manas itself cannot act, but can only direct the six consciousnesses to perform bodily, verbal, and mental actions, while the eighth consciousness cooperates moment by moment. Only after the manas subdues attachment to self and transforms consciousness into wisdom does His deliberation and weighing regarding the self diminish, and He no longer always deliberates and makes decisions centered on His own private interests.

When the manas decides what dharma to create, the eighth consciousness can discern it at all times, then complies with Him, and, based on karmic seeds, outputs the corresponding consciousness seeds, giving rise to the six consciousnesses, and bodily, verbal, and mental actions are thereby performed. Therefore, all bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses must conform to the manas. If occasionally they do not conform to the mind's activity of the manas, when the manas's habitual tendencies are strong, it will inevitably become restless and irritable. Only by subduing the manas can bodily, verbal, and mental actions become pure. If the manas is not subdued, bodily, verbal, and mental actions cannot become pure. If the manas does not change, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses will not change, and karmic actions and karmic seeds cannot change either, so the cycle of birth and death will not cease.

On what basis does the manas deliberate? That is, what is the content of His deliberation? The manas itself is a consciousness and has the nature of consciousness; thus it has a perceiving-aspect (darśana-bhāga). The perceiving-aspect operates in the form of mental factors, mainly the five mental factors of attention (manaskāra), contact (sparśa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saṃjñā), and volition (cetanā). The objects seen by the perceiving-aspect of the manas are the object-aspects (nimitta), that is, the objects and contents of attention, contact, feeling, perception, and volition. These object-aspects are all images manifested by the eighth consciousness based on the original objects. After the manas contacts these images, it can initiate deliberation and then decide how to act and handle them. In addition, the contents and decisions of the six consciousnesses in discerning the six sense objects are fed back to the manas. After receiving them, the manas also deliberates and then makes decisions.