The Determinative Role of Manas in the Twelve Nidānas

Sentient beings experience birth, aging, sickness, and death, a mass of sheer great suffering, all due to ignorance. This ignorance is the ignorance of the manas (mind root). Because the manas has ignorance, mental formations (volitional mental factors) arise. With the presence of mental formations, there arises the choice to create karmic actions, after which the six consciousnesses appear. The first two limbs of the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination pertain to the manas. The third limb, the six consciousnesses, also arises because of the manas. Therefore, the manas holds absolute dominance over birth and death and exerts a driving force on all other dharmas. Even the karmic actions of the third limb, the six consciousnesses, follow the lead of the manas. The seeds deposited also exist because of the manas, hence the nama-rupa (name-and-form) of future lives arises due to the manas. When the manas is defiled, the six consciousnesses become defiled, the seeds become defiled, and the nama-rupa experiences more suffering, especially the suffering of the three lower realms.

After nama-rupa grows, the six sense bases (ayatanas) are born. The contact between the six sense bases and the six sense objects is governed by the manas. Where there is much grasping (clinging/attention) by the manas, there is much contact, and thus much karmic action leading to birth and death. Where there is little grasping, there is little contact, and thus little karmic action leading to birth and death. Following contact, there are feeling, craving, and grasping. Although there is feeling, craving, and grasping by the six consciousnesses, what actually plays the decisive role and can induce the arising of the next limb is the feeling, craving, and grasping of the manas. If the manas has no feeling, craving, or grasping, the next limb will not arise. The final three limbs – becoming, birth, and aging-and-death – arise entirely because of the grasping of the manas. Therefore, the emergence of the cycle of birth and death is decisively determined by the manas.

The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination elucidate that the manas is the root of birth and death. Liberation or sinking (into samsara) both depend on the manas. To end birth and death, one must resolve the problem of the manas and eradicate the ignorance of the manas. The manas is also the root of the Four Noble Truths: suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path. Suffering arises because the ignorance-driven mental formations of the manas prompt the six consciousnesses to create karmic actions. The origin (of suffering) comes from the seeds deposited by the karmic actions created by the six consciousnesses under the impetus of the manas. Cessation is the eradication of the ignorance-driven mental formations of the manas. The path is attained through the manas realizing the Dharma.

Since the manas plays such a vast, decisive role within the cycle of birth and death, it is endowed with all mental factors (caittas/cetasika). It possesses all wholesome mental factors, all afflictive mental factors, and all neutral mental factors. The mental factors of the manas determine the mental factors of the five sense consciousnesses and determine the mental factors of the mental consciousness (mano-vijnana). When the mental factors of the manas change, the mental factors of the six consciousnesses change, and all dharmas change accordingly. If the mental factors of the manas are not changed, even if the mental factors of the six consciousnesses change, they will revert back. If the afflictions of the manas are not severed, even if the afflictions of the mental consciousness are temporarily severed, they will regenerate. If the manas lacks meditative concentration (dhyana), even if the six consciousnesses experience meditative concentration, it cannot last long and will inevitably scatter again.