Mind Activities Determine the Wholesome and Unwholesome Nature of Karmic Seeds

Question: Someone says: When a certain dharma that the manas personally experienced wants to grasp at, if the mind consciousness does not have an extremely strong desire to remember it, the manas, following the judgment of the mind consciousness, will not cause the tathāgatagarbha to store it in an important place, and thus after a long time it is forgotten. Can the manas cause the tathāgatagarbha to store a dharma in an important place or an unimportant place?

Answer: The tathāgatagarbha is formless and without appearance; there are no places within it, and it has no inside or outside. The karmic seeds formed by the actions of the six consciousnesses are formless, appearanceless information, and likewise cannot have form or location. Since there are no places within the tathāgatagarbha, there is certainly no such thing as a place being important or unimportant. The tathāgatagarbha also cannot discern whether karmic seeds and karmic actions are important or not; it does not have this kind of judgment ability, nor can it distinguish which dharmas are important or unimportant. Therefore, the storing of karmic seeds cannot possibly be done according to whether a dharma is important or unimportant.

To put it another way, even if there were important and unimportant places within the tathāgatagarbha, it would still not be the manas that causes the tathāgatagarbha to store seeds according to whether a dharma is important or unimportant—this does not accord with the Dharma principle, and it does not accord with the principle that the tathāgatagarbha stores seeds naturally and spontaneously, as it is by its very nature (dharmatā).

In fact, for all dharmas created by the five-aggregate body and mind, the tathāgatagarbha stores them into the mind-substance at all times without any screening. When the karma differs, the seeds differ; when the mental activities differ, the seeds differ; and the kalpas in which the seeds mature also differ. What does it mean that the mental activities differ? It means the manifestations of the manas and the mind consciousness in the operation of dharmas: whether there are afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion; whether it is intentional or unintentional; whether it is deliberate or not deliberate; what the thoughts and views are; whether there is attachment; whether there is weariness and desire to leave; whether there is wisdom or lack of wisdom; whether it is a concentrated mind or a scattered mind, and so on and so forth—the list goes on. In short, it is the mental factors (caittas) of the several consciousness-minds. When the mental activities of the sixth and seventh consciousnesses differ, their attention to dharmas differs, their application of mind differs, and the karmic seeds formed will differ. To put it plainly, karmic seeds are the record of the mind's activities; when the mental activities differ, the records naturally differ.

On the other hand, regarding the dharmas one has experienced, sometimes the mind consciousness applies itself with the intention to remember; the key point is whether the manas also has the intention to remember. If the manas does not want to remember, no matter how much the mind consciousness wants to remember, it is useless, and in the end nothing is remembered. Whether remembered or not remembered, seeds are stored, but the seeds stored are completely different. If you can clearly distinguish the master-servant relationship between the manas and the mind consciousness, you will not elevate the function of the mind consciousness to such a high degree.