Tell me about Manas-vijnana

[Kyousui]

Any wisdom appreciated.
Gassho
SAT LAH

[Jundo]

Any wisdom appreciated.
Gassho
SAT LAH

Well, let me try something this way in a nutshell, although my view may be a bit modern. In ancient Yogacara Buddhism, one has the insight (very much ahead of its time) that our sense of "self" and the world that is "not the self" is created through the first 6 senses and accompanying consciousnesses (vijnana) of eye, ear, nose, taste, touch and mind (this last one being basically the recipient of the data coming in from the senses plus our inner mental world of thoughts). The Manas is basically the self-reflective aspect which creates that division which results in a sense of "self" vs. all those "not self" things which the "self" considers that it experiences in contrast, and it creates this sense of "self/I" as the mirror reflection when it organizes all the incoming data in coherent categories and identities as separate "not self/not I" things. Modern neuro-science is basically in the same ballpark. This fellow explains it better than me:

In order to appreciate the cognitive significance of manas, one needs to grasp its role as the necessary condition for our knowledge of the external world. ... The [yogacara] "mind-only'' doctrine insists that the outputs of our sensory experiences [from the lower 6 consciousnesses] are unorganized, chaotic, and hardly deserving of the name "knowledge.'' The editorial and organizational work that is necessary for the formation of knowledge out of the chaotic informational flow has to be completed by manas. It is manas that performs the discriminatory function of classification and categorization, which is all important for knowledge to be possible. ...

...Constructing a coherent image of an object requires collaboration among the sensory experiences. An image of an apple is an amalgam of various representations of its shape, smell, taste, and other features. But the content of visual perception does not of itself align with the auditory output. Since the various consciousnesses are simultaneous [] they not 'associated' (samprayukta) ... Not only are particular properties not cognitively discriminated; universals (samanyalakshana) are not abstracted from particulars (svalakshana) either. An eye detects a particular shade of a color but does not see the color itself. Unable to draw the universal from the particular, the sensory perception leaves behind the tremendous arrays of veridical information as raw data. The informational flow is piecemeal and scattered. This inability on the part of perception to generalize over individual experiences also explains the momentariness of the sensual impressions. Recurrent identical particulars are never recognized as such. Memory is practically impossible, for it relies on conceptualization. Impressions come and go. Once an earlier impression vanishes, a new impression rushes in. ... The cognitive processes at the sensory level are intermittent and discontinuous, leaving their outputs always incoherent.

The significance of manas is easy to grasp once one understands the cognitive inadequacy of the senses, for manas accomplishes what the senses fail to do. Corresponding to the threefold inadequacy of sensory perceptions (no particularization, no conceptualization, and no articulated flow of information), manas as the discriminative mind achieves a threefold engineering feat. First, it reorganizes the chaotic sensory output and composes out of it an articulated image of an external object.

Second, manas is able to abstract the universals from the particulars and draw logical inferences that are essential for identifying, recollecting, and grouping the external impressions. Third, through cutting and pasting, manas channels and breaks the originally seamless informational flow and creates lines and boundaries that form distinct networks of informational categorizations.

... Objects seen in any meaningful fashion at the sensory level are nothing but feedback from manas after it has been fed the chaotic sensory outputs. The so-called given objects are actually the results of the editing work of manas. One sees an object as if it were ready at hand, whereas the truth is that the labor of manas has created this illusion. Manas objectifies ...

... Since knowledge consists of not just mental faculties (grahaka) and objects (grahya) but also a distinctive subject, the formation of an "I'' concept constitutes the kernel of manas' activities. As a result, two cognitive missions are accomplished through intentional objectification: an object image is projected and the ego formation comes into fruition. The externalized sense data are loaded with the imprints of an inner self as if they were the mirror image of the latter. What you see is what you are. ...

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...43289/download

Gassho, J

STLah

[Sekishi]

Hi Kyousui,

I really dug into Yogacara last year and found it to be a helpful / practical roadmap to experience. Particularly if treated as a way of examining ones one experience (as opposed to a philosophical / ontological construct).

Yogacara breaks experience into eight consciousnesses. The first six are the ones we often encounter in Buddhist teaching and chant in the Heart Sutra (sometimes referred to as "the All"): sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mind. Yogacara expands on that by including two other aspects of mind - alaya (the "store consciousness", or "seed consciousness" where karma accumulates), and manas (the "consciousness of self").

Of the material I found on the topic, I found "Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara: A Practitioner's Guide" by Ben Connelly to be particularly helpful (as a bonus, Ben has been a guest speaker here at Treeleaf and we've read his book on Shitou's "Inside the Grass Hut"). Ben refers to manas-vijnana as "consciousness of self".

This is likely a vast oversimplification (and Jundo and others may want to check my understanding here), but I've taken to seeing manas as the feeling of "I am" or even the feeling that there is "an observer" who experiences the arising of sense objects. However, this feeling is itself just another sense that arises in some moments and not in others. It is a persistently "sticky" feeling though!

Gassho,
Sekishi
#sat

[Kokuu]

Hi Kyousui

Like Sekishi, I have been digging into Yogacara philosophy and finding it incredibly helpful. As he says, this philosophical system breaks down human consciousness in to eight aspects:

1-5 Five sense consciousnesses or Vijnanas (touch, taste, hearing etc)
6 Mano Vijanana (mind consciousness)
7 Manas Vijanana or Klista-Manas-Vijnana (self-consciousness)
8 Alaya Vijnana (store consciousness

What I think Jundo is talking about is Mano Vijnana which is what makes sense of all of the sensory input through the other five vijnanas.

Sekishi's description fits more accurately with what I think of as Manas Vijnana:

This is likely a vast oversimplification (and Jundo and others may want to check my understanding here), but I've taken to seeing manas as the feeling of "I am" or even the feeling that there is "an observer" who experiences the arising of sense objects. However, this feeling is itself just another sense that arises in some moments and not in others. It is a persistently "sticky" feeling though!

It is talked about in a key Yogacara text by Vasubandhu (who, together with his brother Asanga is considered as the founder of the Yogacara school) - Thirty Verses on Mind Only (Triṃśikā-kārikā): https://thebuddhistcentre.com/system...rses_trans.pdf

[6] Manas is always accompanied by four afflictions (kleśas), which are obstructing, but karmically undetermined. They are known as ‘self-view (ātmadṛṣṭi), self-delusion (ātmamoha), self-conceit (ātmamāna), and self-love (ātmasneha)’.

So, we can see that, as Sekishi says, Manas is what latches onto experience and labels it as 'me' and 'mine', creating the idea of self, pride in oneself and self love.

In early Buddhism, the teachings of the Buddha in the suttas of the Pali Canon were subjected to analysis in order to organise and understand them better. This kind of study became known as Abhidamma (Abhidharma in Sanskrit). Vasubandhu, the author of the Thirty Verse on Mind Only, produced an Abhidharma text called Abhidharmakośakārikā (Verses on the Treasury of Abhidharma) which critiqued some of the early textual analysis.

One of the criticisms, which led to the development of the Yogacara school and the addition of two extra forms of consciousness to the traditional six outlined by the Buddha in his teachings was that the six senses (including mind consciousness, Mano Vijnana) all operated at the same time and presented no basis by which karma could operate or actions could become habitual. It also seemed unworkable for a sense of self to be constantly present given how Mano Vijnana operates based on the sensory information of the other consciousnesses.

In order to make this possible, Yogacara philosophy introduced the idea of the store consciousness (Alaya Vijnana) which both influences how we perceive sensory information based on prior conditioning, and is influenced by new information coming from the sense consciousnesses.

Yogacarins also introduced the idea of Manas to make sense of the human tendency to grasp onto the experience coming in through the sense consciousnesses, and organised by the mental consciousness, as 'me' and 'mine'

In order to break this cycle of delusion, we have to become aware of this tendency and see through it. As I understand it, it is not that Manas ceases to function, but we see that our way of dividing the world of experience into self and other is purely happening in our mind and is not inherently true, even if we need it to function in the conventional world.

I found Ben Connelly's book to be a useful introduction, and it is a commentary on Vasubandhu's Thirty Verses. However, it is very very simple and not sufficient to understand these ideas, in my opinion. Reading Vasubandhu's work itself is very worthwhile.

The Lankavatara Sutra is very good but often dense and hard to understand.

Living Yogacara by Tagawa Shun'ei is probably the best introduction I have read/

I am currently reading William Waldron's book 'The Buddhist Unconscious' which describe how early Buddhists saw the world and how the idea of Alaya-Vijnana developed. This is incredibly good but very detailed and complex. He has, however, recently given an accessible talk at Zen Mountain Monastery: https://zmm.org/podcast/interview-with-william-waldron/

Anyway, in short, Manas is the Yogacara concept of the part of the brain which produces the idea of the self, and attaches that to the thoughts and concepts produced by mind consciousness as we try to make sense of the world. It is not that it is not useful in daily life, but it creates that sense of solidness around the idea of self, which we know from practice and reading Buddhist texts is what continues our suffering in the world.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

ps. apologies for a gross violation of the three sentence rule!

[Jundo]

6 Mano Vijanana (mind consciousness)
7 Manas Vijanana or Klista-Manas-Vijnana (self-consciousness)

Hah, now that is interesting: You are saying that the scholar's paper I quoted is somehow confusing or mixing together Mano Vijnana and Manas Vijnana (please send your cards and letters to Associate Prof. Rui Zhu, the Depts. of Philosophy at Lake Forest and Shenzen Universities, and the editors of the Journal "Philosophy East & West," University of Hawaii Press). I rather thought so too when I first read it (passing the buck ), thinking that the "Mano" (Mind Consciousness) undertakes the work of sorting, categorizing, drawing basic borders and naming among separate "things," and "Manas" is the sense of "self" that results or interacts with such). Well, three things:

1) Whatever the mechanism, the sense and border of "self/not self" arises from all that isolating and categorizing with "self" as a mirror reflection to "not self."

2) Our Zazen practice works to reverse or mitigate the process in various ways to soften or drop those hard "self/not self" borders and categories to replace division with wholeness and flowing.

3) Even though the model of the Eight Consciousnesses is rather quaint and not quite fitting with our modern understanding of the brain (as might be expected for something so ancient), it is however quite ahead of its time, and matches quite well with the conclusions of modern brain science regarding how the raw data from the senses is processed in various regions of the brain to create our inner mental models of "things" with separate or group identities, in categories and with names, and our sense of "self" which arises in contrast and with a sense of border at skin level dividing us from the "not us."

Gassho, J

STLah

[Kokuu]

1) Whatever the mechanism, the sense and border of "self/not self" arises from all that isolating and categorizing with "self" as a mirror reflection to "not self."

2) Our Zazen practice works to reverse or mitigate the process in various ways to soften or drop those hard "self/not self" borders and categories to replace division with wholeness and flowing.

3) Even though the model of the Eight Consciousnesses is rather quaint and not quite fitting with our modern understanding of the brain (as might be expected for something so ancient), it is however quite ahead of its time, and matches quite well with the conclusions of modern brain science regarding how the raw data from the senses is processed in various regions of the brain to create our inner mental models of "things" with separate or group identities, in categories and with names, and our sense of "self" which arises in contrast and with a sense of border at skin level dividing us from the "not us."

I totally agree with all of that, and the eight consciousness model is amazingly sophisticated for its time. William Waldron describes Yogacara as the pinnacle of Indian Buddhist thought and I don't think he is far wrong (although fans of Nagarjuna might argue!).

You are right that separation into self and other is also a part of the discrimination of Mano Vijnana. I don't think the categories are precise descriptions of how the brain operates but they are great for working with practice.

As far as the scholarly paper goes, I have seen Manas used for Mano Vijnana and maybe also for a combination of Mano and Manas Vijnanas.

Gassho
Kokuu

[Shinshi]

If you are a member of the Soto Zen Facebook group you might have already seen this but Mr. Connelly posted this a few hours ago.

I'm considering offering an online class this fall on Vasubandhu's Yogacara, which profoundly influenced Soto Zen and integrates Theravada and Mahayana practices. It's also the central framework for Thich Nhat Hanh's engaged Buddhism. We'd focus on Vasubandhu's Thirty Verses using my book Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara. If you'd be interested in participating please send me a message.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/SotoZenGlobal/permalink/10158452388945692/?__tn__=-R

Gassho, Shinshi

SaT-LaH

[Kokuu]

If you are a member of the Soto Zen Facebook group you might have already seen this but Mr. Connelly posted this a few hours ago.

I'm considering offering an online class this fall on Vasubandhu's Yogacara, which profoundly influenced Soto Zen and integrates Theravada and Mahayana practices. It's also the central framework for Thich Nhat Hanh's engaged Buddhism. We'd focus on Vasubandhu's Thirty Verses using my book Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara. If you'd be interested in participating please send me a message.

Oh, wonderful! Thank you for sharing, Shinshi!

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

[Sekishi]

3) Even though the model of the Eight Consciousnesses is rather quaint and not quite fitting with our modern understanding of the brain (as might be expected for something so ancient), it is however quite ahead of its time, and matches quite well with the conclusions of modern brain science regarding how the raw data from the senses is processed in various regions of the brain to create our inner mental models of "things" with separate or group identities, in categories and with names, and our sense of "self" which arises in contrast and with a sense of border at skin level dividing us from the "not us."

Friends - this is super subjective and a reflection of my personal experience, please take it with a grain of salt...

I would only find Eight Consciousness "quaint" or "outdated" if I try to treat it as a ontological theory / description of "what actually is", as opposed to an epistemological description of the subjective experience of a living human body-mind.

It may not align perfectly with current scientific theories of the functioning of the brain, but it helped me see through the snare of "the observer" phenomenon. I found that while physical sensations, memories, cognition, etc. loose their stickiness and are fairly easily set aside as "not self", the feeling of there being an inherent "one who observes the theater of the mind" was much harder to set aside. I began to wonder, is this "observer" a true and undying self? The short answer is NO. In the suttas it is referred as "the residual conceit of 'I am'".

Friends, even though a noble disciple has abandoned the five lower fetters, he still has with regard to the five clinging-aggregates a lingering residual 'I am' conceit, an 'I am' desire, an 'I am' obsession. But at a later time he keeps focusing on the phenomena of arising & passing away with regard to the five clinging-aggregates: 'Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance. Such is feeling... Such is perception... Such are fabrications... Such is consciousness, such its origin, such its disappearance.

- https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipi....089.than.html

Anyhow, long story (with more than three sentences) short... for me, seeing this "I am" / "one who observes" as manas-vijnana, allowed it to be simply another aspect of "small-m" mind like memories, cognition, etc. This understanding neutralized much of its stickiness. Without it, there is simply "all things carrying out practice-enlightenment through the self" (as I think Dogen put it).

It does not matter to me if we cannot find the "location" or "field state" of manas-vijnana in an fMRI - it is a subjective description of an experience of a living human body-mind, one that can help some beings taste freedom.

Thousands of words, myriad interpretations,
Are only to free you from obstructions.
If you want to know the undying person in the hut,
Don’t separate from this skin bag here and now.

- Shitou, Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage

And again, this a story about my subjective / personal experience. Grain of salt rule in full effect.

Gassho,
Sekishi
#sat