Does the manas possess the power of judgment?

Where there is wisdom, there is judgment. Deliberation (manasikāra) is judgment; the process of deliberation is the process of judgment, and the result of deliberation is making a decision—without judgment, no decision can be made. Because the manas is the consciousness that takes charge, governing the operation of the entire five-aggregate body, without the power of judgment it could not govern the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the five-aggregate body, and thus it could not be the consciousness that takes charge. Then who would take charge? The manas's power of judgment is indispensable; it is only a matter of whether the power of judgment is great or small, and whether it is accurate or not.

On which dharmas does the manas have great power of judgment, and on which does it have small power of judgment? When is its judgment great and accurate, and when is it small and not quite accurate? Under what circumstances does it rely on the discernment of the six consciousnesses to make judgments, and under what circumstances can it make judgments without relying on the discernment of the six consciousnesses? Such differences exist. On dharmas that the manas discerns clearly, its power of judgment is great, because only with clear discernment can it judge well, and judge quickly and accurately; if the manas does not discern clearly, it cannot make judgments, or cannot make them quickly and accurately. Regarding dharmas it cannot understand, the manas is either hesitant and indecisive, or its judgments miss the mark; in this way, the decisions made by the manas are blind and mistaken. When the manas's decisions are wrong, the execution by the six consciousnesses will also be wrong.

But we can observe: in worldly matters, are the decisions of sentient beings all mistaken and blind? Clearly not—there are many instances of being correct and without error, and most of the time things should be reasonable and appropriate. This shows that the manas does possess the power of judgment, and its power of judgment is not small. There do exist cases where it cannot judge, cases of hesitation and indecision, and even more so, cases of misjudgment. This is related to the manas's own wisdom, and to the manas's power of determination (adhimokṣa).

In the manas's judgments, on the one hand, it judges directly based on the dharmas themselves. The more familiar the dharma is to the manas, and the more experience it has had with it, the more easily the manas makes judgments on its own; the more significant and urgent the dharma, the more easily it makes independent and rapid judgments, after which it makes a decision, and the six consciousnesses arise to carry it out. If the manas cannot comprehend with determination (adhimokṣa) the states of the dharmas it encounters, it will be unable to make quick and accurate judgments. On the other hand, the manas's discernment is coarse; to discern in detail, it must rely on the discernment of the six consciousnesses, relying on the mind consciousness's thinking, analysis, study, inference, and judgment, and then, based on the information transmitted by the six consciousnesses, it makes its own independent deliberation and judgment, and the six consciousnesses arise to execute it. If the manas cannot comprehend with determination the content discerned by the six consciousnesses, or the content that the mind consciousness has thought through, analyzed, understood, and judged, it also cannot make judgments and decisions, or its judgments and decisions are mistaken, and the six consciousnesses then execute them wrongly.