Understanding Our Mind: 51 Verses on Buddhist Psychology

Manas arises from store consciousness, and takes a part of store consciousness to be the object of its love, the object of itself, and it holds onto it firmly.

When manas opens itself and becomes more accepting, these six consciousnesses also enjoy openness and acceptance. That is why manas is called “the ground of wholesome and unwholesome.”

This capacity of manas is akin to what biologists call the “primitive” brain, which functions solely in the interest of survival, of self-preservation.

Manas is like an electrical conduit between the store consciousness and the mind consciousness, but because its nature is obscured, it distorts the electrical signal, the information, passing between store consciousness and mind consciousness. When mind consciousness is able to touch the seeds in store consciousness directly, without the distortion

It is always present as a kind of instinct that takes its object as itself.

Then the discrimination between self and nonself, mine and not mine, will vanish.

With the energy of mindfulness generated by our mind consciousness, we can avoid watering seeds of anger, craving, and delusion in our store consciousness and we can water seeds of joy, peace, and wisdom.

The only way to help manas stop grasping at the notions of self and not-self is for us to practice deep looking into the impermanent and interdependent nature of reality.

ourselves. In the flower we can see the sun, the compost, and the earth. One thing brings with it all other things. One thing is all things. When we practice looking like this, we will not complain about manas and how it is always causing us to suffer.

Our habit energies, delusions, and craving come together and create a tremendous source of energy that conditions our actions, speech, and thinking. This energy is called manas. The function of manas is grasping.