Which Consciousness Achieves Perfect Comprehension Independent of Mental Activities?

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, there is a passage: "In this assembly, Mahākāśyapa, having long extinguished the mental faculty, perfectly and clearly cognizes without relying on mental activities." Question: When it is said that Mahākāśyapa has long extinguished the mental faculty, which consciousness is being extinguished? And what does it mean to extinguish?

Answer: A person who possesses knowledge of others' thoughts (he who knows the minds of others) can perceive the thoughts of others anytime and anywhere, provided the other person has thoughts. If the other person is profound and has no thoughts, or if the other person is in meditative concentration (dhyāna) and does not give rise to thoughts casually, then the thoughts cannot be perceived, and the knowledge of others' thoughts becomes useless. To which mind's thoughts do these thoughts refer?

The knowledge of others' thoughts perceives the thoughts of the conscious mind. This is because the thoughts of the conscious mind involve language, words, or sound (including the inner voice/mind-sound), thus the mental activities of consciousness have discernible forms and are easily perceived. However, the mental activities of the mental faculty do not involve language, words, or sound; they lack distinct forms and are not easily perceived. Perceiving the mental activities of the mental faculty requires discerning them through physical, verbal, and mental actions, that is, through the activities of the body faculty and the conscious mind.

So, what did Mahākāśyapa extinguish when it is said he "long extinguished the mental faculty," enabling him to perfectly and clearly cognize without relying on mental activities? Of course, these "mental activities" refer to the mental activities of consciousness. Mahākāśyapa's perfect and clear cognition did not occur through the knowing of consciousness; it was the mental faculty knowing directly, cognizing the internal and external objects of the six sense fields, directly replacing the knowing of the six consciousnesses. Therefore, what Mahākāśyapa extinguished was consciousness and the mental activities of consciousness, not the mental faculty itself. If the mental faculty had been extinguished, Mahākāśyapa's five aggregates would have ceased to exist, and he would have entered the state of Nirvāṇa without residue.