There Is No One Who Can Extinguish the Manas

Question: In nirvāṇa without remainder, who extinguishes the manas?

Answer: When the time of parinirvāṇa arrives, the seventeen realms are extinguished completely, and the manas disappears automatically—there is no one who extinguishes the manas. If there were someone who could extinguish the manas, then there would still be a self; with a self, one could not enter nirvāṇa without remainder; only without self can there be final extinction. Moreover, if there is still a "subject that can [act]," that subject is the self, and the object is what belongs to the self. No one takes the manas as belonging to the self; only when there is neither subject nor object can there be final extinction. With a subject and an object, extinction is impossible.

Final extinction does not mean the manas willingly extinguishes itself, nor is it that the manas is extinguished. Rather, it is because the manas no longer grasps at any dharma, no longer has desire for any dharma; the manas no longer wishes to act, has no longing for anything; the manas's mental factor of deliberation (manana) does not manifest, and thus the tathāgatagarbha likewise does nothing, no longer giving birth to dharmas. The dharmas, one by one, vanish away. Finally, when the tathāgatagarbha sees that the manas has no mental activity whatsoever, it no longer outputs the seeds of consciousness for the manas, and the manas naturally ceases.