MANAS IS THE BASIS for determining whether the other six manifesting consciousnesses—the sense consciousnesses of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind—are wholesome or unwholesome.

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

Our seeds carry the habit energies of thousands of years.

Seeds are produced and strengthened by formations. Formations are manifestations of seeds.

Whether bitter or sweet, all mental formations are blocks of suffering in our consciousness.

Another way to describe nirvana is interbeing.

Store consciousness has the power to maintain, nourish, and bring forth what we expect to have. In the practice of meditation, we trust our store consciousness. We plant seeds in the soil of our store consciousness, and we water those seeds. We trust that one day the seeds will sprout and bring forth plants, flowers, and fruit.

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

The capacity of looking at formations as only conventional designations, the capacity to see them as having no separate selves, and the capacity to transform our attachment and craving will take us in the direction of liberation and healing.