The Realm of the Six Sense Faculties' Interpenetration and Mutual Functioning

The Buddha says in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra that when one cultivates to a certain point, the six faculties can interconnect and function interchangeably. Mahākāśyapa's clear and complete knowing did not depend on mental thought or use the mind consciousness; rather, it employed the manas, with the manas substituting for the mind consciousness and also substituting for the five sense consciousnesses. Thus the manas can possess the functions and roles of the five sense consciousnesses, possess the functions and roles of the mind consciousness, and can concretely and in detail discern the realms of the six sense objects. This means the manas can see and touch the concrete colors and other coarse realms of the five sense objects, can substitute for the mind consciousness in discerning extremely subtle realms of mental sense-objects, and can think, analyze, reason, judge, recall, and so on. For instance, the Bodhisattva Ākāśagarbha, though without a body, could feel tactile sense objects—the manas substituted for the body faculty, the body consciousness, and the mind consciousness. Thus the manas is omnipotent; its functions are unrestricted. All the mental factors (caittas) of the six consciousnesses can be fully possessed by the manas. With only the manas and the eighth consciousness, the existence of a living being can be sustained, and great supernatural powers can be displayed, with nothing left undone.

All dharmas are interconnected. When we have thorough mastery of the Buddha-dharma, all dharma meanings are linked together as one, not things unrelated to one another. It is only when the Buddha-dharma has not been thoroughly mastered that one's own cognition has obstructions—it is one's own mind that limits one's own mind, it is afflictions and afflictive obstruction (kleśāvaraṇa) that limit one's own mind—not that the dharma meanings restrict oneself. Dharma meanings have no intention of limiting people from understanding principles.