The Secret of Contact Arising from the Union of Sense Faculties, Sense Objects, and Consciousness

When consciousness contacts sense objects, the three—faculty, object, and consciousness—converge in contact. What is the result of this? What are the functions of the six consciousnesses? This convergence of the three in contact is extremely important; its result is that consciousness acquires the functions of feeling, perception, and volitional formations, whereby bodily, verbal, and mental actions are produced, and karmic seeds are left behind. If consciousness does not contact sense objects, consciousness has no function whatsoever.

What kinds of sense objects does each consciousness contact? Once you clarify the range that each consciousness can contact, all dharmas can be thoroughly understood and contemplated. Then contemplate: without the six consciousnesses, what else could be done? All these functions are produced by the six consciousnesses; they are subject to arising and ceasing, false and illusory.

Beings in the formless realm have no material body and five faculties, so why does the mind consciousness still exist there, and upon what does the mind consciousness depend for its existence? Upon what conditions does the powerful discriminating function of the mind consciousness depend? Once these questions are clarified, in the future, whether in the Great or Small Vehicle, one will be able to attain somewhat deeper and more thorough awakening. At present, contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) is not comprehensive or thorough, and more and more people have merely intellectual understanding, gaining no real benefit of merit within the mind, with afflictions still just as heavy. When some people see others gesturing and demonstrating, and they too know a certain function involved, they feel as if they have understood, as if they may have awakened; yet they have not reached the root and substance of the matter—this is not realized enlightenment.

When the faculty contacts the object, consciousness arises; when the faculty does not contact the object, consciousness cannot arise. At the end of life, the four great elements disintegrate first, yet consciousness still exists at that time and can still discriminate and feel, hence the sensation of intense suffering. Everyone's material body is upheld by one's own eighth consciousness, and changes in one's material body are also the result of the functions of one's own several consciousnesses. Then how can one person go and kill another person, thereby altering the condition of another person's material body? Without the mind consciousness, the five consciousnesses cannot arise; the discrimination of the six sense objects is decided by the manas, which acts as the master—the manas necessarily contacts the mental sense objects (dharma-viṣaya); if the manas does not decide and does not act as master, the eighth consciousness does not produce the five consciousnesses; whereas if the manas acts as master, it is already contacting the mental sense objects, and the mind consciousness will certainly arise—the mind consciousness is also the common supporting condition (俱有依) of the five consciousnesses.