Understanding Our Mind: 51 Verses on Buddhist Psychology

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

Manas says the “self ” it has created as an object of its perception is the most important thing. This insight is obscured—it is mati, a strongly held, false perception.

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.

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

Affliction-obstacles need more time, more practice, to dissolve. Our anger, misery, and despair are blocks in our store consciousness. We have to practice touching them deeply with the energy of mindfulness in order to see their roots and transform them.

To say that manas is always discriminating means that it holds on to the object that it regards as its self, its beloved. Everything in the world is connected with us yet we think, “Those things are not myself. Only this is myself.”

Practicing meditation, looking deeply, we can identify and touch the blocks of ignorance, craving, and other afflictions in our store consciousness, and make the right effort to stop going in that direction.

ourselves. In the flower we can see the sun, the compost, and the earth. One thing brings with it all other things. One thing is all things. When we practice looking like this, we will not complain about manas and how it is always causing us to suffer.

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