Base-consciousness, citta is the eighth consciousness. If vijnana is the worker and mana the manager, then citta is the overseer, or that aspect of mind that collects the karma generated by the mind’ s response to phenomena. Citta is both the basis of our bondage to samsara and as well as our realization of nirvana— it is the foundation of our existence. For the unenlightened, it is a repository of karmic imprints and propensities for all deeds committed in the past. These past imprints condition our physical appearance, personality, habits, and our general experience of the environment in this life. Mental consciousness ( vijnana) and base-consciousness ( citta) are related to, and dependent on, the mind faculty, in that without the latter, they cannot function.

Mental factors ( dhatus) are the symbols with which the consciousnesses make sense of the interactions between sense organs and sense objects. They also refer to the reasoning, feeling, emotions, memory, and other mental functions, that lead to all kinds of experience and interaction. One school of Buddhism speaks of fifty-one mental dharma states.28 Actually, this is just an expedient delineation of the different states of mind, for in truth there are innumerable subtle mind-states. We will not discuss the dhatus in detail, suffice to say that each differs in its object of apprehension, mode of apprehension, and degree of intensity.

When negative attitudes like greed and jealousy dominate our mind, we tend to commit actions that cause frustration and dis-ease in ourselves and in others. Conversely, when wholesome factors like compassion and humility pervade the mind, our actions lead to wellbeing and stability. Hence, our persistent striving to manipulate the external environment to find happiness and dispel suffering is futile, for it is the negative mental factors dwelling inside us that cause all our suffering and confusion.