There Is No One Who Can Extinguish the Manas

Question: In Nirvāṇa without remainder (Anupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa), 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 one attain final extinction. There would also still be an "ability to extinguish"—the ability is the self, and the object is what belongs to the self. When no one takes the manas as belonging to the self, with no ability and no object, only then can final extinction occur; with an ability and an object, extinction is impossible.

Final extinction does not occur because the manas is willing to extinguish 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 toward any dharma; the manas has no wish to engage in activity and seeks nothing; the manas's mental factor of deliberation (manasikāra) does not arise, and the tathāgatagarbha likewise engages in no activity and no longer gives birth to dharmas; the dharmas, one by one, vanish. Finally, when the tathāgatagarbha sees that the manas has no mental activity whatsoever, it no longer outputs the consciousness seeds of the manas, and the manas naturally ceases.