Who Is the Busiest in the World and Beyond the World?

All dharmas, both worldly and transcendent, are manifested and sustained by the eighth consciousness. The eighth consciousness participates in all dharmas; it pervades all dharmas, pervades all aggregates, sense bases, and elements, and pervades all times and places. The busiest of all, worldly or transcendent, is certainly the eighth consciousness. Yet He never feels busy, because His mode of operation is unconditioned, programmatic, and naturally so/intrinsically so; toward all dharmas He maintains a mind of equanimity, feeling neither suffering nor joy, having no sensation toward any dharma, no feelings or experiences, utterly without mind. Therefore He never feels weary.

Among worldly dharmas, the next busiest is the seventh consciousness. The seventh consciousness, relying on the eighth consciousness, can cognize all the dharmas manifested by the eighth consciousness and silently embraces all dharmas; thus the seventh consciousness operates upon all dharmas. Although the seventh consciousness can give rise to the imputed nature (parikalpita-svabhāva) toward all dharmas, universally measuring and grasping all dharmas, the seventh consciousness also abides in neutral feeling (upekṣā-vedanā) and never feels busy or weary; otherwise He would simply rest. If He rested, the eighth consciousness could not function, and all dharmas would cease—such a situation has never occurred. The exception is the seventh consciousness of arhats and pratyekabuddhas: their seventh consciousness has grown weary of the worldly dharmas of the three realms, no longer cherishing or greedily grasping worldly dharmas, and therefore chooses to enter extinction, where the five aggregates (pañcaskandha) vanish and all dharmas cease. Thus the seventh consciousness remains busy even during sleep, death, coma, and meditative absorption. Comparing the seventh consciousness with the sixth consciousness, it is still the seventh consciousness that is the busiest.

Although the seventh consciousness is very busy with worldly dharmas and never rests, there are many tasks of the eighth consciousness in which the seventh consciousness cannot participate. For example, the eighth consciousness participates in manifesting the worldly dharmas of the three realms and manifesting the universe's material world (bhājana-loka); the seventh consciousness only plays a driving role. As for how exactly to transmit the seeds of the four great elements, how to manifest bodies, faculties, vessels, and worlds, the seventh consciousness neither knows nor understands, and cannot participate in the manifestation. When the eighth consciousness discerns karmic seeds and transmits karmic seeds, the seventh consciousness also cannot participate. When the eighth consciousness transmits the seven intrinsically existing great seeds (earth, water, fire, wind, space, seeing, consciousness), the seventh consciousness has no awareness of it and cannot participate. Therefore the eighth consciousness is the busiest of all—only He is never tired, has no sensations, pays no price, and does not even know how much He has contributed. In fact, the seventh consciousness also never knows that it is busy, nor does it feel fatigue; otherwise it could grasp fewer dharmas and choose to rest and cease. But the seventh consciousness can know the fatigue of the six consciousnesses and the fatigue of the body; taking the body and the six consciousnesses as itself, it decides to let the body and the six consciousnesses rest.

The next busiest is the mind consciousness, but the sixth consciousness is in a state of cessation rather often; in the operation of many dharmas the sixth consciousness is absent. The sixth consciousness operates only upon the mental sense-objects (dharma-objects) among the six sense-objects. The solitary mental consciousness is not only busy by itself with the Image-Only Objects of the mental sense-objects; the mental consciousness accompanying the five sense consciousnesses (pañcavijñāna-sahagata-manovijñāna, C. 五俱意識) must also work busily together with the five sense consciousnesses, and is also responsible for transmitting intelligence to the seventh consciousness, serving as assistant and advisor. It is like in an army: the staff officers are busy gathering intelligence, analyzing the military situation and the posture of both sides, and finally submit all the gathered and analyzed intelligence to the commander, who decides whether to fight the battle and how to fight it. The staff officer corresponds to the mind consciousness, and the manas corresponds to the commander. Of course, the commander is also busy directing throughout the process, only the form of busyness is different. Those who concretely gather intelligence are the five sense consciousnesses; they correspond to orderlies and sentries, responsible for standing guard and conducting reconnaissance, while the sixth consciousness is responsible for analysis and synthesis, providing appropriate suggestions to the commander. Because the work done by the six consciousnesses is rather concrete, they can feel suffering, joy, and fatigue, and need to rest from time to time. But the eighth consciousness never rests; no matter what situation arises, even if the seventh consciousness chooses to abandon the worldly dharmas of the three realms, the eighth consciousness does not cease along with it.