According to Açvaghoṣa, with the evolution of the Manas there arise five important psychical activities which characterise the human mind. They are: (1) motility, that is the capability of creating karma; (2) the power to perceive; (3) the power to respond; (4) the power to discriminate; and (5) individuality. Through the exercise of these five functions, the Manas is able to create according to its will, to be a perceiving subject, to respond to the stimuli of an external world, to deliver judgments over what it likes and what it dislikes, and finally to retain all its own “karma-seeds” in the past and to mature them for the future, according to circumstances.
With the advent of the Manas, the evolution of the Citta is complete. Practically, it is the consummation of mentality, for self-consciousness is ripe now. The will can affirm its ego-centric, dualistic activities, and the intellect can exercise its discriminating, reasoning, and image-retaining faculties. The Manas now becomes the center of psychic coördination. It receives messages from the six senses and pronounces over the impressions whatever judgments, intellectual or volitional, which are needed at the time for its own conservation. It also reflects on its own sanctum, and, perceiving there the presence of the Âlaya, wrongfully jumps to the conclusion that herein lies the real, ultimate ego-soul, from which it derives the notions of authority, unity, and permanency.
As is evident, the Manas is a double-edged sword. It may destroy itself by clinging to the error of ego-conception, or it may, by a judicious exercise of its reasoning faculty, destroy all the misconceptions that arise from a wrong interpretation of the principle of Ignorance. The Manas destroys itself by being overwhelmed by the dualism of ego and alter, by taking them for final, irreducible realities, and by thus fostering absolute ego-centric thoughts and desires, and by making itself a willing prey of an indomitable egoism, religiously and morally. On the other hand, when it sees an error in the conception of the absolute reality of individuals, when it perceives a play of Ignorance in the dualism of me and not-me, when it recognises the raison d’être of existence in the essence of Tathâgatahood, i.e., in Suchness, when it realises that the Âlaya which is mistaken for the ego is no more than an innocent and irreproachable reflection of the cosmic Garbha, it at once transcends the sphere of particularity and becomes the very harbinger of eternal enlightenment.
Buddhists, therefore, do not see any error or evil in the evolution of the Mind (âlaya). There is nothing faulty in the awakening of consciousness, in the dualism of subject and object, in the individualising operation of birth-and-death (samsâra), only so long as our Manas keeps aloof from the contamination of false egoism. The gravest error, however, permeates every fiber of our mind with all its wickedness and irrationality, as soon as the nature of the evolution of the Âlaya is wrongfully interpreted by the abuse of the functions of the Manas.[62]
Though Mahâyânism most emphatically denies the existence of a personal ego which is imagined to be lodging within the body and to be the spiritual master of it, it does not necessarily follow that it denies the unity of consciousness or personality or individuality. In fact, the assumption of Manovijñâna by Buddhists most conclusively proves that they have an ego in a sense, the denial of whose empirical existence is tantamount to the denial of the most concrete facts of our daily experiences. What is most persistently negated by them is not the existence of ego, but its final, ultimate reality. But to discuss this subject more fully we have a special chapter below devoted to “Âtman.”
The Sâmkhya Philosophy and Mahâyânism.
If we draw a comparison between the Sâmkhya philosophy and Mahâyânism, the Âlayavijñâna may be considered an unification of Soul (puruṣa) and Nature (prakṛtî), and the Manovijñâna a combination of Buddhi (intellect) or Mahat (great element) with Ahankâra (ego). According to the Sâmkhyakârika (11), the essential nature of Prakṛtî is the power of creation, or, to use Buddhist phraseology, it is blind activity; while that of Puruṣa is witnessing (sakṣitvâ) and perceiving (drastṛtvâ). (The Kârika, 19.) A modern philosopher would say, Puruṣa is intelligence and Prakṛtî the will; and when they are combined and blended in one, they make Hartmann’s Unbewusste Geist (unconscious spirit). The All-Conserving Mind (Âlaya) in a certain sense resembles the Unconscious, as it is the manifestation of Suchness, the principle of enlightenment, in its evolutionary aspect as conditioned by Ignorance; and Ignorance apparently corresponds to the will as the principle of blind activity. The Sâmkhya philosophy is an avowed dualism and permits the existence of two principles independent of each other. Mahâyânism is fundamentally monistic and makes Ignorance merely a condition necessary to the unfolding of Suchness.[63] Therefore, what the Sâmkhya splits into two, Mahâyânism puts together in one.
So is the parallelism between the Manovijñâna, and Buddhi and Ahankâra. Buddhi, intellect, is defined as adhyavasâya (Kârika, 23), while Ahankâra is interpreted as abhimanas (Kârika, 24), which is evidently self-consciousness. As to the exact meaning of adhyavasâya, there is a divergence of opinion: “ascertainment,” “judgment,” “determination,” “apprehension” are some of the English equivalents chosen for it. But the inner signification of Buddhi is clear enough; it indicates the awakening of knowledge, the dawn of rationality, the first shedding of light on the dark recesses of unconsciousness; so the commentators give as the synonyms mati (understanding), khyâti (cognition), jñânam, prajñâ, etc., the last two of these, which mean knowledge or intelligence, being also technical terms of Mahâyânism. And, as we have seen above, these senses are what the Buddhists give to their Manovijñâna, save that the latter in addition has the faculty of discriminating between teum and meum, while in the Sâmkhya this is reserved for Ahankâra. Thus, here, too, in place of the Sâmkhya dualism, we have the Buddhist unity.
Another point we have to take notice here in comparing the two great Hindu religio-philosophical systems, is that the Sâmkhya philosophy pluralises the Soul (puruṣa, Kârika, 18), while Buddhism postulates one universal Citta or Âlaya. According to the followers of Kapila, therefore, there must be as many souls as there are individuals, and at every departure or advent of an individual there must be assumed a corresponding soul passing away or coming into existence, though we do not know its whence and whither. Buddhism, on the other hand, denies the existence of any individual mind apart from the All-Conserving Mind (Âlaya) which is universal. Individuality first appears at the awakening of the Manovijñâna. The quintessence of the Mind is Suchness and is not subject to the limitations of time and space as well as the law of causation. But as soon as it asserts itself in the world of particularisation, it negates itself thereby, and, becoming specialised, gives rise to individual souls.[64]