The Varieties of All Dharmas

Bodhisattva Vasubandhu stated in the Mahāyāna Hundred Dharmas Treatise (Bai fa ming men lun): All dharmas can be briefly summarized into five categories. First, the mind dharmas: eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, mind consciousness, manas, and the eighth consciousness—eight consciousnesses in total. Second, the mental factors (caittas), briefly fifty-one in number: the five universal factors, the five object-specific factors, eleven wholesome dharmas, six fundamental afflictions, twenty secondary afflictions, and four that are indeterminate as to wholesome or unwholesome. Third, material form (rūpa), briefly eleven in number: the five material sense faculties, the five sense objects, and form subsumed under the Dharmāyatana. Fourth, formations dissociated from mind (citta-viprayukta-saṃskāra), briefly twenty-four in number. Fifth, the unconditioned dharmas (asaṃskṛta), briefly six in number: unconditioned space, unconditioned cessation through discriminative wisdom (pratisaṃkhyā-nirodha), unconditioned cessation not through discriminative wisdom (apratisaṃkhyā-nirodha), the unconditioned immovability, the unconditioned cessation of perception and feeling, and the unconditioned suchness (tathatā).

The eleven forms of material form include: the five sense faculties, the five sense objects, and form subsumed under the Dharmāyatana. The five faculties are the eye faculty, ear faculty, nose faculty, tongue faculty, and body faculty; the five sense objects are material form-object, sound, scent, taste, and tangibility. The first five faculties are material sense faculties (rūpa-prasāda), composed of the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind; they are also called the gross physical sense organs, located on the surface of the body, facing the sense faculties of sentient beings, visible to sentient beings, and belong to material form. The five supreme faculties (rūpa-prasāda) located in the back of the brain are also composed of the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind, and belong to material form; the nature of the five faculties is arising and ceasing, mutable, impermanent, and not-self. The five sense objects are composed of the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind; they face the sense faculties of sentient beings, and the eye faculties of sentient beings can see them; therefore they belong to material form, and are likewise arising and ceasing, mutable, impermanent, and not-self.

Form subsumed under the Dharmāyatana: upon the five sense objects, the mental sense-objects of those five sense objects manifest simultaneously; these also belong to material form and are called form subsumed under the Dharmāyatana; they are also composed of the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind. The mental sense-objects manifest depending on the five sense objects and face the manas; when the manas grasps at and contacts them, the mind consciousness specifically discerns them; they are likewise arising and ceasing, mutable, impermanent, and not-self. After the manas contacts the mental sense-objects upon the five sense objects, the tathāgatagarbha produces the mind consciousness, which can then recognize the mental sense-objects. That is to say, at this time the mind consciousness discerns the five sense objects together with the first five consciousnesses: the five consciousnesses discern the coarse forms of the five sense objects, while the mind consciousness simultaneously discerns the subtle mental sense-objects upon the five sense objects; what the five consciousnesses discern is coarse, and what the mind consciousness discerns is subtle. The above is an extremely brief summary; if explained in detail, it would have to be divided into inner faculties, outer faculties, inner sense objects, outer sense objects, inner mental sense-objects, outer mental sense-objects, and so on—the content is extremely complex.