How the Manas Is Successfully Perfumed

For the manas to be successfully influenced, it must have contemplated the encountered object-realms, and only after thorough comprehension does it develop trust and confirmation. Once accepted, the mental conceptions transform, being shaped by this Dharma. For the manas to contemplate the Dharma clearly and thoroughly, it must occur under reduced clinging and with minimal interference; only with a certain degree of concentration can wisdom arise to comprehend it thoroughly, allowing the Dharma to penetrate the mind. Therefore, the wisdom of the manas is necessarily related to samadhi—the deeper the samadhi, the more profound the wisdom. However, consciousness does not necessarily require much samadhi.

If the manas is not successfully influenced, its mental conceptions cannot transform, failing to eradicate ignorance and exhaust defilements, thus remaining unchanged. If the principles grasped by consciousness are potent, they can subdue and suppress the manas. Yet once consciousness becomes unclear, it cannot regulate the manas, and the defilements of the manas will manifest. This is the state of sentient beings before eliminating defilements. At this stage, they can only uphold the precepts of body and speech without violation but cannot guard the mind to avoid transgression. They are unable to strictly or automatically uphold the bodhisattva precepts at the mental level, nor can they maintain the bodhisattva's mental precepts, because their minds remain untransformed. This constitutes a process in the Buddhist practice of sentient beings; the duration of this process varies individually, depending on the roots of virtue and merit of each sentient being.