The desire for goals is the mental factor of desire (chanda-caitasika) of the manas.

For people who have not studied Buddhism, everything they do for others has a purpose. Buddhist practitioners who have not yet cultivated their minds to the state of non-action (wu-wei) also generally act with purpose when dealing with others. Which mind possesses this purposefulness? Both the conscious mind (manovijñāna) and the manas have it. When there is planning, premeditation, step-by-step procedure, and means and methods, that is the purposefulness of the conscious mind—and most of it is driven by the purposefulness of the manas. What is done unconsciously and spontaneously is the purposefulness of the manas. Sentient beings act driven by desire, and their minds all have purposefulness; those who act without desire or seeking, simply according to conditions and their nature, are as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.

The purposefulness and desires that exist before an action is carried out belong to the manas. There are also times when the desires and purposefulness of the manas arise through the instigation and instruction of the conscious mind. Only after the manas has desires does it drive the six consciousnesses to carry out bodily, verbal, and mental actions according to its desires, in order to satisfy them. In the course of their operation, the six consciousnesses each also have their own desires, which then influence and transform the manas, causing it to extinguish its original desires or give rise to new ones. When a person comes over to make contact with you, they certainly already have something they seek and have purposefulness—it is only a matter of whether that purpose is right or wrong, wholesome or unwholesome.

If someone is not a bodhisattva with a vast and expansive mind, and not a bodhisattva whose mind is partially or entirely in a state of non-action, yet he claims that he acts with absolutely no desires and seeks nothing, it is best not to believe him. Even a bodhisattva whose mind has already reached non-action still has wholesome desires, such as wanting to teach and transform sentient beings, wanting all beings to be liberated from the sea of suffering, and so on. If the manas has no purpose, He simply rests and does nothing. Even the Buddha's manas has purposefulness—for the sake of sentient beings' liberation, without any personal selfish interest or desire. The Buddha came to the Saha world precisely with the purpose of benefiting sentient beings; otherwise, the Buddha would not have come. Some people have purposefulness in their conscious mind and in their manas, yet they themselves do not know it, cannot detect it, or deliberately choose not to detect it. If the conscious mind is not subtle enough, it cannot know the hidden desires and purposes of the manas—in fact, they are not really hidden; it is simply that without wisdom, they cannot be discovered.