Intuition—The Power of Perceptual Awareness of the Manas

Steve Jobs said that you should trust your intuition, which transcends thinking and lets you see what thinking cannot see. The intuition Jobs spoke of is the awareness of the manas, while thinking is the awareness of the mind consciousness. The dharmas that the mind consciousness can be aware of are finite in scope, whereas the awareness of the manas is unlimited; the mind consciousness cannot be aware of many dharmas that the manas is capable of perceiving.

Why is the awareness of the manas called intuition? Because the manas, relying on the tathāgatagarbha, can know all dharmas. The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra expresses this as the manas silently encompassing all dharmas—the manas can swiftly reach and engage every dharma; the degree to which it knows the dharma is another matter. Therefore the awareness of the manas is extremely fast: it directly confronts the dharma, directly and swiftly discerning it—knowing if it knows, not knowing if it does not—without passing through the analysis and inference of the mind consciousness; at this point the mind consciousness has not yet arisen. But once a dharma falls into the mind consciousness, there must inevitably be a round of deliberation, analysis, inference, and judgment, which makes a huge detour and takes a relatively long time, so the final result is not genuine, because it contains an element of inference and conjecture—it is not seeing and knowing in the present moment.

In the past, when Chan masters guided students to enlightenment, if a student rolled his eyes and racked his brain thinking over a question, the Chan master would immediately strike him with a board and tell him: "If you can get it, get it—what is there to deliberate about?" Chan masters all guided students to awaken through intuition, without falling into thinking. When the question was posed, if the student awakened, he awakened; if not, he did not—falling into the deliberation of the mind consciousness was not allowed. If a Chan master is guiding you to enlightenment and you ponder over and over, then right at the moment you begin pondering, you should be struck with a blow and sent home—how could you be allowed to ponder again and again? Yet nowadays some people, upon "awakening," ponder for several hours or even several days; such a result is even less credible. The answer might be pondered correctly, but no matter how correct it is, it is not it—because it was figured out by the mind consciousness, not directly seen, not personally seen.

If you interrogate someone about whether they know a certain matter, and that person hemming and hawing thinks it over and over without answering directly, then that person's words are not credible—the thinking within contains elements of concealment and adulteration. For example, suppose you deliberate, analyze, infer, imagine, and ponder the appearance of Beijing, and finally conclude what Beijing is like and how it is—congratulations, you pondered it correctly; Beijing is roughly like that. But because you have never been to Beijing, you are not someone who has personally seen Beijing. Only someone who has been to Beijing and entered the city is one who has personally seen Beijing; such a person's description of Beijing's appearance will be true and genuine, fine and detailed, utterly certain, beyond doubt. This corresponds to the elimination of the three fetters in the elimination of self-view—cutting off doubt, with no lingering uncertainty. But for someone who has never been to Beijing, no matter how they describe Beijing's appearance, inwardly they feel unsteady and insecure, not daring to be one hundred percent certain. This corresponds to the intellectual understanding of the mind consciousness, which cannot cut off the three fetters and cannot eliminate doubt and give rise to faith.

Only when you have quietly done all the work behind the scenes and are lacking just that last little bit can a Chan master guide you to enlightenment and realization of the Path—like water flowing into place, a channel naturally formed, completely without artifice, without the slightest adulteration. Or perhaps you lack only the right conditions and timing; then the Chan master will observe you and pay attention to your state, watching whether the time has come for you. When the time arrives, he will give you the opportunity, letting you awaken and enter. But if, upon observation, he finds that you are still far off, the Chan master will absolutely not step in to guide you. Yet with today's so-called enlightenment, even when a student is still a hundred thousand miles away, they forcibly drag him along with an iron hook—the result is like pulling up a big radish, yanking it to death alive; nothing good comes of it, and the future karmic retribution is extremely terrifying.