After Cultivating the Path, the Manas First Generates Wisdom and the Mind Consciousness Generates Wisdom Afterward (2024-10-21)

Ru Chun asked: "Disciple now finds that when I encounter certain questions, they keep hanging in my mind, as if no matter what I am doing with my hands, the question is always there, lingering and refusing to go away. Sometimes it lasts a while, sometimes several days, until an answer surfaces. After the answer comes out, I feel anxious to write it down for fear of forgetting it. After the answer emerges, I repeatedly ponder it, checking whether the answer is right or wrong, which parts are correct and which parts are wrong, how it could be better expressed, and so on—constantly ruminating.  

When I encounter a problem, I must think it through and write it down before I can sleep in peace; otherwise, the manas seems unwilling to let me sleep. Sometimes after an answer comes out, the mind consciousness seems not to have fully understood the content of the answer, and I still have to ponder for a long while before gradually understanding it. My current dilemma is: the mind consciousness's ability cannot keep up with the manas, and it cannot judge whether the answer is good or bad, right or wrong. Is this situation good or not?"

Answer: A question that keeps hanging in the mind, lingering and refusing to go away, shows that your power of meditative concentration (samādhi) has strengthened, enabling you to remain concerned with one question continuously until you think it through clearly. Under such conditions of concentration, it is the manas that keeps the question suspended; the mind consciousness can only hold it for a short time, and it is fickle, vanishing quickly, without stickiness. It is the manas that has stickiness and can persist—if the power of concentration were insufficient, the manas could not do this.  

The act of writing down thoughts is carried out by the six consciousnesses, and the command to write is issued by the manas. When the power of mindfulness is not strong, one fears forgetting, and so anxiously writes the thoughts down to solidify the memory, or to preserve the thoughts. Although there is meditative concentration and the manas's deliberation (manana) has been employed, when wisdom is still insufficient, errors in thinking are unavoidable, and deliberation cannot produce a correct result. Persevere, and there will be unexpected gains.

That after both your meditative concentration and your contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdom have advanced, you discovered that the wisdom of the mind consciousness cannot keep up with the wisdom of the manas—what a wonderful discovery this is! Once genuine wisdom arises, it is indeed true that the wisdom of the manas is great and abundant, while the mind consciousness trails far behind, unable to catch up. This shows that the ultimate, fundamental wisdom is generated by the manas, and that the contemplative practice wisdom that comes after meditative concentration is generated by the manas. In cultivation, the manas is the first to generate wisdom, and the mind consciousness obtains its wisdom only after the manas. Because it is the manas that holds the questioning doubt and investigates it, naturally it is the manas that first resolves the questioning doubt and generates wisdom, then transmits it to the mind consciousness to know. After the mind consciousness knows it, it still needs to fully understand what the manas has realized before it can generate wisdom. This further proves that in a cultivator, it is indeed the manas that first eliminates self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi) and awakens to the true mind and sees its nature, and only afterward leads the mind consciousness to eliminate self-view and awaken to the true mind and see its nature—the mind consciousness generates wisdom after the manas.

From the fact that immediately upon waking you understood a problem, you can know that the manas generated wisdom first, and the mind consciousness had wisdom afterward. During one night, the manas deliberated the problem through clearly; after waking, the mind consciousness appeared and, without doing anything, obtained the manas's wisdom and understood the problem the manas had deliberated through. This evidence even more clearly demonstrates the question of the sequence in which the manas and the mind consciousness give birth to wisdom.