Does Manas Have a Starting Point?

Question: A completely liberated arhat possesses the ability to extinguish the manas, causing the five aggregates and eighteen elements to vanish. After such an arhat extinguishes the manas, is it possible for the manas to re-emerge from the tathāgatagarbha? If possible, wouldn't that mean the manas gains a starting point?

Answer: After entering parinirvāṇa, when rebirth occurs, the manas certainly gains a starting point. However, prior to parinirvāṇa, there is no starting point, because since time without beginning, there has been a single thought of ignorance within the mind, thus the manas cannot be extinguished.

When entering parinirvāṇa, the manas is extinguished. Who extinguishes the manas? Is there an agent that extinguishes the manas? If there is, then there still exists a self, an agent of control. At the moment of approaching nirvāṇa, if the manas thinks "I will extinguish myself," this very thought indicates that attachment has not been severed, and one cannot enter parinirvāṇa. If the tathāgatagarbha were to extinguish the manas, then the tathāgatagarbha would possess the nature of agency, the self-nature characteristic of the seven consciousnesses, and would no longer be the non-self tathāgatagarbha. Only when all mental activities cease within the manas, when mental factors no longer arise, and the tathāgatagarbha has no alternative but to cease delivering seeds, can the manas vanish by itself.