The manas does not greedily attach to the flavor of anger

Question: The manas has a peculiar habit that is unknown to ordinary people: it often craves the flavor of anger. For example, some people cannot stand seeing others do well; as long as others are stronger than they are, they give rise to anger. Worse still, some even kill sentient beings to satisfy their own sense of pleasure.

The manas is also a two-faced character: on one side it is defiled, and on the other side it is pure. For this reason, the Consciousness-Only school calls it the basis of defilement and purity, because on one side of it is the eighth consciousness, the tathāgatagarbha, and on the other side are the six transforming consciousnesses. The tathāgatagarbha, on which it depends, is constant and pure, while the six transforming consciousnesses on which it depends are constantly turning and defiled. For this reason, those who study Consciousness-Only know that the manas is the basis of defilement and purity. Is the above account correct?

Answer: The vast majority of the manas's habits are unknown to ordinary people, because ordinary people lack both meditative concentration and wisdom and cannot realize the manas. Even if someone realizes it, because afflictions obstruct them and they have not transformed consciousness into wisdom, they cannot observe the operation of the manas and cannot know its mental activities with certainty, so misunderstandings abound. Those who have not eliminated afflictions and those who have not transformed consciousness into wisdom—the manas is endowed with all afflictions, and the greatest afflictive habits are greed and anger. If the manas is to give rise to mental activities of greed, it must consider the dharma it craves to be useful to itself, something it likes, something that feels comfortable and pleasant, something that can satisfy its own preferences, interests, and vanity.

When anger manifests, what flavor is there in being angry? This claim is very strange, because anger is a mental factor, a mental activity of the conscious mind. The claim that the manas craves its own mental activities does not hold up. Anger itself is behavior that harms body and mind, and it is unpleasant. Who likes to make themselves unhappy and work against themselves? Unless one has a masochistic disorder, ordinary people do not like anger; avoiding it is something to be avoided whenever possible. Even when one wants to take revenge on others, it injures others seven parts and damages oneself ten parts; most people do not like this. Therefore, to say that the manas craves the flavor of anger—there is absolutely no such thing. From another perspective, flavor is the conscious mind's feeling toward the six sense objects of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas. The conscious mind can crave feelings toward sense objects, especially pleasant and comfortable feelings, but it will not crave the unpleasant feeling of being angry—there is no such principle.

People with relatively heavy anger frequently give rise to angry behavior. They will vent the fire in their minds, projecting it onto others, so that they themselves can calm down. Therefore, people with especially heavy anger will commit violence against others to vent their anger; only after the anger is vented can they feel somewhat comfortable, or even feel happy and joyful. Some people cannot find an object on which to vent their emotions, so they vent on themselves or on objects, and then their mood calms down. Only a very small number of special people are like this; most people are not. But this also does not show that one craves the flavor of anger. Anger is anger, and greed is greed; no one likes anger, yet there is no way around it—the manas simply has anger, and from time to time it flares up.

The basis of defilement and purity is not to be explained that way. The true meaning of the basis of defilement and purity is that the manas is the basis and source upon which the six consciousnesses are pure or defiled; whether the six consciousnesses are defiled or pure depends on the manas to determine. Because the manas is the consciousness that takes charge, it can direct the actions of the six consciousnesses according to its own mental activities. Thus, how the mental activities of the six consciousnesses turn out rests with the manas: if the manas is defiled, it will inevitably direct the six consciousnesses to create defiled karma; if the manas is pure, it will inevitably direct the six consciousnesses to engage in pure conduct, or the six consciousnesses will operate little or not at all.

Since beginningless kalpas, the manas has always relied on the tathāgatagarbha to be born and to operate, relying on the tathāgatagarbha to see all dharmas; yet it has never become pure by relying on the purity of the tathāgatagarbha—it has always been defiled. Therefore, the tathāgatagarbha is not the pure basis on which the manas depends. Only after truly realizing the tathāgatagarbha can one gradually rely on the pure nature of the tathāgatagarbha and transform one's own defiled mental activities, becoming ever purer.

On the other hand, although the manas relies on the six consciousnesses to discern the six sense objects and to carry out bodily, verbal, and mental actions, the manas's defilement is innate; the defilement exists without being perfumed by the six consciousnesses, and even when there are no six consciousnesses, the manas has always been defiled. Conversely, in the cycle of rebirth through the six realms, the manas continually perfumes the six consciousnesses with its own defilement, teaching the six consciousnesses greed, anger, and delusion; the six consciousnesses, in turn, contact defiled environments in the cycle of rebirth and pass the greed, anger, and delusion they have been perfumed with back to the manas, thereby further increasing the manas's defilement of greed, anger, and delusion. Therefore, the manas's defilement is not born by relying on the six consciousnesses either. However, if the manas is to transform toward purity, it must rely on the six consciousnesses' cultivation of the Buddha's teachings; only when the six consciousnesses are pure can the manas gradually become pure. Conversely, once the manas is pure, the six consciousnesses are not easily perfumed by defiled environments and will inevitably also be pure.