The Function of Deliberation and Discernment of the Manas

The manas' constant, attentive deliberation (manasikāra) has been operating in this way since beginningless kalpas. He always clings to the existence of a self, constantly and attentively deliberating on what is most advantageous to himself, on how to achieve his own aims and fulfill his own wishes; He forever weighs and measures all the dharmas He encounters, deliberating on how to take up or let go. After deliberation, He decides to take up or reject and to act, but He needs the six consciousnesses as tools to carry out actions, for the manas himself cannot act; He can only direct the six consciousnesses to perform bodily, verbal, and mental actions, while the eighth consciousness cooperates moment by moment. Only after the manas has subdued self-grasping and transformed consciousness into wisdom does His deliberative and weighing nature regarding the self diminish, and He no longer always deliberates and makes choices centered on His own selfish interests.

Whatever dharma the manas decides to act upon, the eighth consciousness can discern it at every moment, and then complies with Him, outputting the corresponding consciousness seeds in accordance with karmic seeds, producing the six consciousnesses, and thus bodily, verbal, and mental actions are carried out. Therefore, all bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses necessarily accord with the manas; if occasionally they do not accord with the mental activities of the manas, then when the manas' habitual tendencies are heavy, one will inevitably become agitated and irritable. Only when the manas has been subdued can bodily, verbal, and mental actions be purified; if the manas is not subdued, bodily, verbal, and mental actions cannot be purified. If the manas does not change, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses will not change, karmic actions and karmic seeds cannot change, and the cycle of birth and death will be unending.

Upon what does the manas deliberate? That is to say, what is the content of His deliberation? The manas himself is a consciousness and possesses the nature of consciousness, so He has a perceiving-aspect (darśana-bhāga). The perceiving-aspect operates mainly in the form of mental factors (caittas), namely the five mental factors of attention (manaskāra), contact (sparśa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saṃjñā), and volition (cetanā). The objects perceived by the manas' perceiving-aspect are the object-aspects (nimitta), that is, the objects and contents of attention, contact, feeling, perception, and volition; all these object-aspects are images manifested by the eighth consciousness based on the underlying realm (essence realm). After the manas makes contact with these images, He can give rise to His deliberative nature, and then make choices about how to act and handle them. In addition, the contents discerned and the choices made by the six consciousnesses regarding the realms of the six sense objects are fed back to the manas; upon receiving them, the manas must also deliberate, and then make His choices.