The Principle of Mind-Consciousness, Contact, and Feeling

Speaking of the three dharmas of faculties, sense objects, and consciousness, one must of course touch upon the five universal mental factors of the six consciousnesses: contact, attention, feeling, perception, and volition. The contact of the six consciousnesses is the threefold convergence; the threefold convergence is the coming together of the faculties, sense objects, and consciousness—this is called contact, and none of the three can be lacking. After the six faculties and six sense objects make contact, the eighth consciousness gives birth to the six consciousnesses, and the six consciousnesses then contact the six sense objects; at the same time, the six sense objects continue to contact the six faculties without ever leaving them, because the inner six sense objects are born at the site of the supreme faculties (indriya), and the manas has also been in constant contact with the mental sense objects. The contact spoken of here refers to the contact between faculties and sense objects, and does not include the contact of the manas or the contact of the eighth consciousness; of course, the contact of the manas and the eighth consciousness only requires directly contacting the object-aspect (nimitta), and does not need other faculties to induce its arising.

The contact of the manas directly contacts the mental sense objects transformed and manifested by the eighth consciousness; the contact of the eighth consciousness directly contacts the faculties and objects—that is, it contacts the faculties, the physical body, the material world, and contacts karmic seeds. The contact mental factor of the six consciousnesses differs from the contact mental factors of the seventh and eighth consciousnesses: the contact mental factor of the six consciousnesses must have faculties to induce its arising; only by not being separate from the six faculties is there contact. The feeling mental factor is the same: the feeling mental factor is the feeling that arises after the six consciousnesses contact the six faculties and six sense objects; the feeling here involves not only receiving and experiencing, but afterwards also emotional feelings—painful feeling, pleasant feeling, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. But the feeling of the seventh and eighth consciousnesses is simply pure receiving and experiencing, without a trace of emotion, without painful or pleasant feeling, corresponding only to neutral feeling (upekṣā-vedanā) (neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling).