Do the five particular mental factors operate after the feeling mental factor among the five universal mental factors?

The meaning of "universally operative" (sarvatraga) is that whenever a conscious mind appears, the five universally operative mental factors necessarily accompany the mind's operation. The conscious mind may operate without other mental factors accompanying it, but it must be accompanied by the five universally operative mental factors. Their true meaning is this: for example, when two people meet, that is called contact; only after contact can there be discernment and feeling, and finally there is a decision or judgment. Without meeting, one cannot discern the other person or decide other matters. Before meeting, there is attention (manaskāra), directing toward a certain place, and only then can one meet at that place. Discernment is akin to getting to know the other person; this is a process whose duration is not fixed. The eye seeing form also involves a process; one cannot immediately judge what the form is.

When the five universally operative mental factors operate, they first operate in sequential order; without sequence, how could they operate? If there were no sequence, then at the moment of contact (sparśa) when the faculty, object, and consciousness come together, all matters would have their results immediately. But in reality, the great and final results, as well as the small results and the segmented results, all appear only after a period of time following contact; it is not the case that results arise as soon as there is contact. The results are the decision and the subsequent actions and formations.

Without contact, there is no subsequent receiving and experiencing; without experiencing, there is no discernment; without discernment, there is no subsequent feeling; and without the final decision, there is no subsequent mental activity. The five object-specific mental factors generally appear after the mind's feeling factor, after the perception factor, or after the volition factor; it is not fixed at which specific stage they appear. Without attention and contact, there is also no desire factor (chanda), no perception factor, and thus no determination factor (adhimokṣa), no mindfulness factor (smṛti), and no wisdom factor (prajñā). On the other hand, without the desire factor, one may not engage in attention and contact, and then there would be no five universally operative mental factors either.

The concentration factor arises after the attention, contact, and feeling factors; then one can become concentrated on the attention, concentrated on the contact, concentrated on the feeling, concentrated on the perception, and only afterward can wisdom arise, with the final volition factor appearing. But it is also possible that the concentration factor comes first, concentrated on one or two dharmas, and then the five universally operative mental factors—attention, contact, feeling, perception, volition—operate; or it may also be that the concentration factor appears only after the volition factor.

Overall, the five object-specific mental factors do not necessarily appear and operate at any particular stage of the five universally operative mental factors. Because the five universally operative mental factors operate in continuous cycles, they do not remain fixed at any single stage; if they were to remain at a certain stage, that would mean being concentrated there, and the conscious mind would then have concentration.

When the power of concentration is insufficient and the wisdom insufficient, and the mind is not extremely subtle, it is indeed not easy to observe the operation of the mental factors. The mental factors of any consciousness all belong to the domain of the seed-wisdom of consciousness-only (wei-shi zhong-zhi).