Eradicating the View of Self That Takes Consciousness as Self (Three)

The mind consciousness can be divided into two kinds: consciousness accompanied by the five senses (pañca-sahagata-mano-vijñāna) and solitary consciousness (mano-vijñāna-eka-citta). When it operates together with the five sense consciousnesses and performs the function of discernment, it is the consciousness accompanied by the five senses; when it does not operate together with the five sense consciousnesses and can function on its own, it is the solitary consciousness. This mind consciousness that is together with the eye consciousness, when seeing form, can simultaneously analyze the quality, source, and content of that material sense-object, as well as how boring or how interesting that material sense-object is; thus there arise feelings toward form, discrimination of form, understanding of form, and judgments about form—all of these are the discriminating functions of the mind consciousness.

By what causes and conditions does the mind consciousness arise? For the mind consciousness to arise, there must be such conditions as the eye faculty, material sense-objects, the manas, the eighth consciousness, and the seeds of consciousness itself. Because these causal conditions exist, our mind consciousness can manifest presently and can discriminate the specific content of material sense-objects, discern form, judge form, deliberate upon form, plan to deal with form, and speculate about form. This is the mind consciousness that is together with the eye consciousness; if even one condition is lacking, the mind consciousness cannot be born and cannot arise to discern. From this, one knows how illusory our mind consciousness is.