The divisions of the five aggregates are as follows:
1. The aggregate of consciousnesses, defined as the fully cognizing of objects.
2. The aggregate of forms, defined as physical forms.
3. The aggregate of sensations, defined as the experiencing of what is pleasant, painful, and neutral.
4. The aggregate of conceptions, defined as the apprehending of the concreteness of things and so forth (as attributes).
5. The aggregate of formations, defined as the fully forming [of attitudes] in regard to objects.
I. The aggregate of consciousnesses can be divided into eight:
1. The all-ground consciousness, like the pure surface of a mirror, is cognition that does not reach out toward an object, but forms the basis for cognition to take place.
2. The mind consciousness has as the object a general mental image and is the subsequent intellect that examines the object.
3. The disturbed-mind consciousness forms the cognitions that accept or reject.
4–8. The five sense consciousnesses are the five nonconceptual cognitions perceiving visual form and so forth.
That is to say, the five sense consciousnesses are nonconceptual in terms of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. The mind consciousness knows them individually, and the disturbed-mind consciousness accepts or rejects them. The five sense consciousnesses and the mind consciousness alone do not accumulate karma; karma is accumulated in the all-ground by the disturbed mind consciousness.
This all-ground is the basis for all of them and is nonconceptual as well as neutral. For instance, it is like the moment of consciousness resting in itself without examining anything and also without clear cognizance.
The all-ground consciousness is the moment of consciousness that is clearly cognizant, but not actively involved in an object.
The five sense consciousnesses are the clear perceptions of the objects.
The mind consciousness is merely the apprehending that can link outside and inside together.
The disturbed-mind consciousness is what gives rise to accepting and rejecting.
II. The aggregate of sensations has three types: feeling pleasure toward pleasant objects, feeling pain toward the unpleasant, and feeling indifferent toward the neutral.
III. The aggregate of conceptions has three types: engagement in an object that is vast, small, or intermediate.
IV. The aggregate of formations has the fifty-one mental states that are concurrent formations:
1–5. The five ever-present mental states are contact, attention, sensation, conception, and attraction.
6–10. The five object-determining mental states are adherence, intention, recollection, concentration, and discrimination.
11–21. The eleven virtuous mental states are faith, conscience, shame, conscientiousness, equanimity, commiseration, exertion, pliancy, nonattachment, nonaggression, and nondelusion.
22–27. The six root disturbances are attachment, anger, arrogance, ignorance, belief of the transitory collection, and doubt.
28–47. The twenty subsidiary disturbances are envy, stinginess, hypocrisy, pretense, self-infatuation, lethargy, excitement, lack of faith, laziness, distraction, heedlessness, forgetfulness, nonattentiveness, hostility, lack of conscience, shamelessness, fury, resentment, concealment, and spite.
48–51. The four variable mental states are regret, sleep, concept, and discernment.
Among them, the forty-nine excepting sensation and conception and the nonconcurrent formations, such as names and attributes, are what perform the function of producing samsara and nirvana.
The nonconcurrent formations that are neither matter nor cognition are: acquisition, serenity of cessation, conceptionless serenity, nonconception, life faculty, birth, aging, subsistence, impermanence, group of names, of words, and of letters, regular sequence, definitive distinctness, connection, link, number, sequence, location, time, and gathering.
V. The aggregate of forms can be divided into fifteen:
1–4. The four causal forms, which are the four elements of earth, water, fire, and wind.
5–9. The five sense objects of visual form, sound, smell, taste, and texture.
10–14. The five sense faculties of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body.
15. Imperceptible form.
Imperceptible forms are five: form of particles, spatial form, form resulting from a fully taken promise, imagined form, and mastered form.