How the Tathāgatagarbha Records Karmic Actions and Outputs Karmic Seeds (V)

After seeds are stored, they serve as habit-energy seeds of the manas, and the manas carries the corresponding habit-energies. When the seeds of the six consciousnesses are transmitted out, the six consciousnesses become manifest. When the six consciousnesses manifest, on the one hand they must accord with the mental activities of the manas, because the manas is the master consciousness, capable of directing the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses; on the other hand, they will encounter new environments and will be influenced and perfumed by those environments. It is like water flowing through an area: it carries along the miscellaneous things around that area and mixes them together, and thus the water becomes perfumed. When the environments encountered by the six consciousnesses differ, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions may differ as well; and after the six consciousnesses are perfumed, they in turn perfume the manas.

For example, suppose the six consciousnesses originally had defiled mental activities, but suddenly they encounter a wholesome condition—they encounter the Buddha-dharma—and so they begin to study Buddhism and cultivate. After studying the Buddha-dharma, having understood cause and effect, they know what should be done and what should not be done. Then the mind consciousness transmits the principles it has understood to the manas, so that the manas also understands them; in this way the manas is perfumed. The bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses studying Buddhism are stored as seeds in the tathāgatagarbha, and if the manas has been perfumed, its mental activities are also stored as seeds in the tathāgatagarbha. When the tathāgatagarbha then transmits the seeds out, the seeds become manifest, and the bodily, verbal, and mental actions accord with the principles of Buddhism. In this way the manas has been perfumed and transformed: the seeds transmitted out are pure, and the mental activities of the manas have changed.

In this process, the manas plays the decisive role in all bodily, verbal, and mental actions; and the manas also plays the decisive role when the tathāgatagarbha stores the karmic seeds of bodily, verbal, and mental actions—He is the bond or relay station connecting the tathāgatagarbha and the six consciousnesses. Whether the tathāgatagarbha is storing karmic seeds or transmitting them out, the manas is a very important pivot. Because the manas's discerning wisdom regarding the specific six sense-objects is relatively weak, it cannot make specific discernments of the six sense-objects. The content specifically discerned by the six consciousnesses must be transmitted to the manas instant by instant; in this way, the manas discerns the content discerned by the six consciousnesses. Then the manas gives rise to the volition mental factor (cetanā) and decides how to act. These decisions may be made according to the manas's own habit-energies and inertia, or they may be made according to the analysis of the six consciousnesses—it is not fixed.

The manas may follow its habit-energies, or it may make its choices according to the newly perfumed content of the six consciousnesses, the newly discerned information, and the principles analyzed. Which of these plays the leading role—whether it is one's own habit-energies that play the leading role, or the newly perfumed principles of the six consciousnesses—is not fixed. Perhaps the manas will make a synthesis; perhaps it will act according to its own habit-energies, or according to the principles analyzed by the six consciousnesses. After the manas deliberates (manana) and makes its choice, the tathāgatagarbha discerns its mental activities and will give rise to the six consciousnesses, producing bodily, verbal, and mental actions in accordance with the content of the manas's deliberation and in accordance with the manas's mental activities. How the bodily, verbal, and mental actions are carried out—the manas's deliberation and choice are crucial.

Moreover, after the manas finishes discerning the information discerned by the six consciousnesses, however He deliberates, however He chooses, whatever mental activities He gives rise to—whether those mental activities are defiled or pure—the tathāgatagarbha will also faithfully make a record, storing the seeds of those mental activities. The tathāgatagarbha also carries the manas's mental activities—all of them, whether wholesome or unwholesome—back into the tathāgatagarbha, where they are stored as seeds. What, then, are the manas's mental activities? One is its original habit-energies; the other is the influence upon the manas of the content discerned by the six consciousnesses. That is to say, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses are also stored into the tathāgatagarbha through the manas. Whatever mental activities the six consciousnesses have within those bodily, verbal, and mental actions, the tathāgatagarbha records and stores exactly those mental activities; whatever mental activities the seventh consciousness, the manas, has, the tathāgatagarbha records and stores exactly those mental activities—quite faithfully, without the slightest omission. Moreover, the storing occurs simultaneously, instant by instant, without a single link ever being missed. After everything has been stored, the entire event is stored as a karmic seed.