Chapter 21: Eight Consciousnesses
The further you cultivate, the more you will see the bad side of human nature.
To the point where you are less willing to interact with others.
It doesn’t matter, cultivators should achieve both seeing the evil in human nature and retaining the good in their hearts.
This goodness is not blind goodness; do not be good to everyone you meet. Cultivation is for self-improvement, not for conforming to or acting with anyone.
Blindly being good will only foster the growth of some evils. You should manifest goodness when encountering goodness, and manifest Vajra when encountering evil.
If a cultivator cannot even protect their own heart, they cannot cultivate.
Because cultivation is an operation against human nature, it is to use the inherent patterns of the human heart to actively change one’s own mental patterns with the power of awareness.
Here, I remind you again, do not get entangled with some people, or rather, energies.
Because once your cognition is no longer so mediocre, those mediocre people, those who still live under the patterns of habit and cognition, will come out to slander you.
Once you propose a viewpoint different from theirs, they will attack you from many high ground, especially morally.
They want to destroy what is different in your cognition from theirs, wanting to assimilate you into their ways.
They use their shallow cognition to imagine you as they see you in their hearts, and then confront you with what they consider righteousness.
Absolutely do not get too entangled, or rather, do not get entangled when your energy is not high. Cut it off when you must.
When your energy is high, nothing they say will affect you, then try to guide them, offer a few words of advice. If they still don’t understand, it means their fate is not enough, do not force it. Just guide them according to fate.
If they entangle with you endlessly, scold them when you should scold, and curse them when you should curse. But remember one thing, do not truly get angry. If you get angry, it means your skill is not enough.
You should be like Mount Tai collapsing before you without changing your expression; how can you be disturbed by a few vulgar words?
Let go of the self-perspective; when there is no such thinking pattern of “me,” you will not argue. This is the key point.
Yesterday I saw a video where an older sister was also talking about cultivation using her own understanding,
she said that the human physical body is a carrier, and the real person is the consciousness and thought within.
Then, the emotions and desires in a person are brought about by the physical body.
To be honest, hearing this made me angry, furious.
I was not angry because her cognition was different from mine, or because our viewpoints differed.
Rather, it was because she could easily lead many ignorant people into an abyss, meaning she was guiding people in the wrong direction of cultivation.
For this, I felt pity for many people, hence my anger.
What are emotions caused by the physical body? Without thought, how can there be emotions?
If the physical body could generate emotions on its own, wouldn’t the pork in the market have lost its temper long ago?
If you don’t think about anything, where do emotions come from? If you don’t think about anything, where do desires come from?
You blame these on the physical body! Do you know how people who don’t understand will torment their own bodies if they believe this?
Isn’t this kind of viewpoint evil? Isn’t it hateful?
If many people truly listen to such rhetoric, and when they experience emotions and suffering, instead of resolving the problem from their own hearts and minds, they torment their bodies in various ways, it’s truly ridiculous! It has harmed a large group of people! Anyone who trusted her words has been harmed by her!
Can you say I don’t feel pity, don’t feel anger?
I have been painstakingly, without seeking reward, teaching everyone methods of cultivating the heart, how to change oneself by changing one’s mind.
She, on the other hand, blames everything on the physical body, saying that without a physical body, there would be no troubles. What a hateful statement!
If a person has no physical body, are they still human? They don’t even understand that if the heart doesn’t move, there are no emotions, yet they claim to teach cultivation to others?
It truly leaves one speechless.
Here, we will recount the process of the human mind from before birth to after birth. Everyone, please think more.
At the very beginning, humans are conceived from the combination of cells from their parents’ bodies. Cells are individuals acting under the subconscious. They do not have independent thoughts, meaning no independent consciousness, but are driven by instinct.
After the sperm and egg combine and form in the mother’s body, although consciousness exists, actions are still driven by instinct.
After birth, driven by instinct from behind, and gradually through education from human parents and people around them, self-awareness is formed.
The relationship between consciousness and self-awareness is whether you have your own thoughts, or the ability to think and discriminate for yourself.
This requires a stable process, usually after the age of three or five, and gradually stabilizes as age increases.
Thought requires consciousness to drive it, and consciousness requires the subconscious to form. Without consciousness, humans would not have thought.
Without the subconscious, humans would not develop consciousness.
The eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind are called the Six Consciousnesses, namely, Eye Consciousness, Ear Consciousness, Nose Consciousness, Tongue Consciousness, Body Consciousness, and Mind Consciousness. They are also called the Six Roots.
Simultaneously, they are called the Six Dusts: form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharma.
Humans rely on the Six Roots to perceive the world and are obscured by the Six Dusts.
That is, what the eyes see, ears hear, nose smells, tongue tastes, body touches, and the mind thinks.
Because of the Six Roots and Six Dusts, there is discrimination: what is good-looking, what sounds good, what smells good, and so on.
The first five consciousnesses are essentially organs receiving signals and transmitting them to the inner heart, which then drives the mind to discriminate.
After the mind discriminates, people consider what they believe to be good as good, and what they believe to be bad as bad.
Over time, this also influences the subconscious, which then discriminates good and bad, right and wrong subconsciously, which is habit.
Once this habit is formed, sometimes you don’t need self-awareness to discriminate; you rely on habit.
After a long time with habits, these patterns begin to control your judgment.
In cultivation, it is believed that humans have a total of Eight Consciousnesses. The eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body are the first five consciousnesses.
Consciousness is the sixth consciousness, the manifest consciousness.
The seventh consciousness is the Manas Consciousness, which is the habit and discrimination instinct formed by the influence of the first six consciousnesses. It often discriminates good and bad, right and wrong based on past experience.
The eighth consciousness is the Alaya Consciousness. Some call it a storage system, recording all events that have happened across past lives. It is somewhat like the deep subconscious.
The subconscious is divided into shallow and deep subconscious. The shallow subconscious can be perceived; it is like habit.
The deep subconscious is not easily perceived; it is the most important secret of human beings.
Simply put, the first six consciousnesses generate the seventh consciousness, self-awareness. Self-awareness discriminates good and bad, right and wrong under the influence of the first six consciousnesses, which in turn affects habits.
Habits influence the eighth consciousness, the deep subconscious.
If you don’t quite understand, let me simplify it further.
The Five Senses and Six Consciousnesses, that is, the first six consciousnesses, influence self-awareness, which is thinking and judgment.
The thinking and judgment of self-awareness then influence the deep and shallow patterns of the subconscious.
The patterns of the deep subconscious affect the habits and tendencies of life after life.
This means that whatever you do or think is stored, and you are influenced by it life after life.
The cultivation of the heart in practice is to change one’s own habits by modifying thinking patterns, thereby changing what you store.
