What Constitutes a Spiritual Practice That Ensures Merit Is Not Wasted?

As people age, brain atrophy weakens their indriya, which affects the functions of the six consciousnesses. What are the specific impacts? For instance, when meeting someone new, they may remember the person at the moment but forget afterward—this indicates impaired memory function of the mental consciousness. Is the function of the manas (mental faculty) affected? The intrinsic function of manas remains unaffected, but its collaborative functions with the six consciousnesses are influenced by the latter, not by the brain or indriya. This occurs because, when an elderly person sees someone, the impression does not penetrate deeply into the manas; it remains only at the level of mental consciousness, leading to subsequent forgetting.

Conversely, an elderly person may have a profound and deeply ingrained memory of a close relative, Person A, and may even feel deep concern for them. Despite this, when seeing Person A, they might clearly recognize them internally yet mistakenly call them Person B’s name while discussing matters related to Person A. This confusion arises from the mental consciousness, not the manas. As a person grows older, the function of indriya weakens further, and the mental consciousness becomes increasingly muddled. Although manas itself remains clear, physical, verbal, and mental actions are all performed jointly by mental consciousness and the five sensory consciousnesses, inevitably leading to various errors and obstacles.

In our Buddhist practice, to ensure that meritorious deeds are not done in vain and to preserve the merits of cultivation, how should we practice? We must not remain at the level of mental consciousness—merely understanding, thinking, analyzing, reciting, and memorizing. Instead, we should diligently cultivate samadhi (meditative concentration). Within samadhi, we contemplate and immerse the learned Dharma into the heart of manas. Then, in this state of concentration, we allow manas to deliberate, achieving direct experiential realization. Only by frequently engaging manas can we develop genuine wisdom, enabling it to grow continuously, extend into future lives, benefit us life after life, increase perpetually, and ultimately culminate in the attainment of Buddhahood.