Questions and Answers

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For mental consciousness to arise, what is its mental sense power (faculty)?

Answer: For mental consciousness, its uncommon empowering condition is not a physical sense power (faculty) but rather the mental sense power, which is the mental primary consciousness (i.e. the main mind of mental consciousness). Based on this uncommon empowering condition, the mental primary mind, its result is called mental consciousness.

This position aligns with discussions in "Please see the below quote from this book Namdak, Tenzin, and Tenzin Legtsok. "Freedom through correct knowing: on Khedrup jé's Interpretation of Dharmakīrti's seven treatises on valid cognition." (2022).

All minds must have an uncommon empowering condition, this being the factor determining which kind of objects they can engage and in which of the six classes of consciousness they are included. While one can posit the five sense powers (eye sense power and so forth) as the uncommon empowering conditions for the five sense consciousnesses, respectively, positing the uncommon mental sense power is more complicated. Because any main consciousness’s or main mind’s immediately preceding moment of consciousness creates an opportunity for the arising of the subsequent moment of consciousness, the preceding moment of a main mind can in that way act as a mental sense power for mental direct perceivers to come about. This preceding moment of main consciousness is in fact necessary for any consciousness to arise, but for sense consciousnesses it is the common, not the uncommon, empowering condition, while for mental consciousness it is the uncommon empowering condition.

How many conditions are needed for consciousness to arise?

As mentioned in Chapter Four: Great Cause and Effect (Collected Topics, by Purchok Ngawang Jampa):

If it is a sense consciousness, there is a pervasion that it has all three conditions, and if it is consciousness, there is a pervasion that it has an immediately preceding condition and an empowering condition

If it is a sense consciousness, there is a pervasion that a physical sense power is its uncommon empowering condition. In the Sutra of Valid Cognition it says ' its name came because of the sense power'.

If it is a mental consciousness, there is a pervasion that its uncommon empowering condition is a mental sense power because out of the statement in the Sutra on Valid Cognition that ' knowledge of form takes two aspects, depending on the eye and the mind', the statement ' depending on the mind' is a valid statement.

This indicates that mental consciousness does not require the focal object condition.