The Six Consciousnesses Are Subordinates and Advisors of the Manas

Does each commander, after his manas receives intelligence information, still need to think, analyze, and deliberate? Does he still need to study and process it? Does he still need to make strategic and tactical arrangements and deployments? Even if he fully agrees with the opinions and suggestions of his staff—the six consciousnesses—must he not still go through his own thinking, study, analysis, and judgment, have his own mental activity, before he can finally agree and make the decision? Should not the staff subordinates and the commander each have their own mental activities, their own wisdom and strategies, their own methods, their own experience, and so on? It is the same with the manas and the six consciousnesses.

Outsiders can only see the investigative role of the staff subordinates, but cannot see the commander's process of thinking over and processing the intelligence before making decisions. So they say that all these decisions and all the battle commands are the credit of the staff subordinates—is such a statement reasonable?

Ninety-nine percent of us, or even more than that, can only see the work achievements of the subordinates and cannot see the commander's hard work at all. Because they have no access to the commander and cannot see the commander's process of working and making decisions, they believe that all the work is done by the staff subordinates, and that the commander merely nods in agreement and makes the decision.

Buddhist practitioners often deny the dharmas they themselves do not know and have not realized; what they cannot see, they say does not exist. They only believe in themselves and refuse to believe in the inadequacy of their own wisdom. This is a universal phenomenon, and this is exactly how slander of the Dharma comes about.

Proponents of the six-consciousnesses theory are everywhere in the Sahā world. Because they cannot realize the eighth consciousness, cannot realize the manas, and cannot observe the functions and roles of these two transformative-agency (parināma) consciousnesses, they simply deny them.

There are also some people who, although they believe in the existence of the eighth consciousness, or have slightly realized the eighth consciousness, cannot realize the manas and cannot observe its operation directly in the present, so they deny the various functions and roles of the manas and become proponents of the seven-consciousnesses theory, which is also very problematic.