Mental Factors Are Mind-Nature and Mind-Activities

The operation of the mind consciousness and its mental factors (caittas) is closely connected with a person's character, temperament, disposition, and wisdom. If you want to understand how the mental factors operate, you can observe each person's facial expressions, gaze, countenance, speech, behavior, speed of reaction, and so on, from the moment they first encounter something until they finally make a decision. From this, you can observe the process and speed of each mental factor's operation, as well as how heavy each person's habitual tendencies are and how strong their wisdom is. This whole series of mental activities is both a manifestation of a person's nature, habits, afflictions, and wisdom, and also a manifestation of the mental factors.

Some people are hot-tempered and rather coarse in mind. After coming into contact with people and affairs, they only make a rough discernment and, regardless of whether it is right or wrong and regardless of details, assume that what they have discerned is ultimate and infallible. Then feelings arise—joy, anger, greed, or aversion—with very heavy grasping, and then, without weighing anything, they directly make a choice. The operation of their mental factors is simple and fast, but the consequences may be unthinkable. Other people, after making a rough discernment and once feelings arise, will again carefully discern and analyze on their own, then correct their mistaken understanding; their feelings change, and only then do they make a decision. The operation of their mental factors is somewhat more complex and will run repeatedly. Many people, as their discernment keeps deepening, undergo constant changes in the mental factor of feeling; they are swayed by people, things, and events, their minds completely immersed in them, unable to transcend.

A rational person, if they have not thoroughly understood people, things, and events, will not produce any thoughts or emotions, nor will they easily make judgments or choices; they do not take their temporary, rough understanding as ultimate, but will repeatedly observe, discriminate, and deliberate. A person of cultivation, even when they discern people, things, and events that they like or dislike, remains unmoved in mind, transcendent beyond things—liberated.

For careless, slapdash people, the mental factors operate quickly and simply; for people of meticulous mind, the mental factors operate slowly, deeply, subtly, and complexly. For people with heavy afflictions, the mental factors also operate complexly, entangled and unresolved. For dull people, perhaps after a quick discernment they find their ability insufficient and give up, and the mental factors quickly cease; or perhaps they want to discern clearly, and then the mental factors operate extremely slowly—long discernment, long feeling, long deliberation—yet they still cannot make a final decision. Intelligent and wise people may discern clearly in a very short time, deeply understanding its meaning, or they may discern it very thoroughly and meticulously to the very end, without error.

The operation of the mental factors is extremely intricate and complex, closely related to each person's character, temperament, disposition, and the severity of their afflictions and attachments, and also closely related to each person's cultivation, practice, meditative concentration (samādhi), precepts, and wisdom.