How Does Tathāgatagarbha Record Karmic Actions and Emit Karmic Seeds (V)?

After the seeds are stored, they serve as the habitual tendencies of the manas, and the manas carries the corresponding habitual tendencies. When the seeds of the six consciousnesses are transmitted out, the six consciousnesses become manifest. When the six consciousnesses become manifest, on the one hand they must conform to the mental activities of the manas, because the manas is the consciousness that takes charge and can direct 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 the water becomes perfumed by them. When the environments encountered by the six consciousnesses differ, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions may differ as well. After the six consciousnesses are perfumed, they in turn perfume the manas.

For example, the six consciousnesses originally had defiled mental activities, but suddenly they encounter a wholesome condition, encounter the Buddha-dharma, and begin to study Buddhism and cultivate. After studying the Buddha-dharma, understanding cause and effect, one knows what should be done and what should not be done. Then the mind consciousness transmits the principles it has understood to the manas, letting the manas also understand them, and 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 conform to the Buddhist principles. In this way the manas has been perfumed, the transmitted seeds are pure, and the mental activities of the manas are changed.

In this process, for all bodily, verbal, and mental actions, the manas plays a decisive role; and in the tathāgatagarbha's storing of the karmic seeds of bodily, verbal, and mental actions, the manas also plays a decisive role—He is the link or relay station connecting the tathāgatagarbha and the six consciousnesses. Whether the tathāgatagarbha is storing karmic seeds or transmitting karmic seeds, the manas is a very important pivot. Because the manas's discriminating wisdom regarding the specific six sense objects is relatively weak, it cannot make specific discriminations of the six sense objects. The content specifically discriminated by the six consciousnesses must be transmitted to the manas moment by moment; in this way, the manas comes to know the content discriminated by the six consciousnesses. Then the manas gives rise to the mental factor of volition (cetanā) and decides how to act. These decisions may be made according to the manas's own habitual inertia, or may be made according to the analysis of the six consciousnesses—it is not certain.

The manas may follow its habitual tendencies, or may make choices according to the newly perfumed content of the six consciousnesses, the newly discriminated information, and the analyzed principles. Which one plays the leading role—whether it is one's own habitual tendencies or the newly perfumed principles of the six consciousnesses that play the leading role—is not certain. Perhaps the manas will make a synthesis, perhaps following its own habitual tendencies, perhaps following the principles analyzed by the six consciousnesses. After the manas deliberates (manasikāra) and makes a choice, the tathāgatagarbha, discerning His mental activities, will give rise to the six consciousnesses, and the bodily, verbal, and mental actions are carried out according to the content of the manas's deliberation and according to the mental activities of the manas. How the bodily, verbal, and mental actions are carried out—the manas's deliberation and choice are crucial.

And after the manas has finished discriminating the information discriminated by the six consciousnesses, how He deliberates, how He chooses, what mental activities He gives rise to, and 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 brings the manas's mental activities—all mental activities, whether wholesome or unwholesome—back into the tathāgatagarbha, where they are stored as seeds. What are the manas's mental activities? One is the original habitual tendencies, and the other is the influence on the manas of the content discriminated by the six consciousnesses. In other words, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses are also stored into the tathāgatagarbha through the manas. As for what mental activities the six consciousnesses have within those bodily, verbal, and mental actions, the tathāgatagarbha records and stores exactly those mental activities; as for what mental activities the seventh consciousness, the manas, has, the tathāgatagarbha records and stores exactly those mental activities—most faithfully, without the slightest omission. Moreover, the storing occurs simultaneously moment by moment, without a single link ever being omitted. After everything has been stored, the entire event is stored as karmic seeds.