Fifty Verses on the Nature of Consciousness Part IV

Verses Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, and Thirty describe the nature and characteristics of the five sense consciousnesses of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. We have already learned something about these five consciousnesses in our discussion of the store consciousness, manas, and mind consciousness. Just as store consciousness is the base of manas, and manas is the base of mind consciousness, these five sense consciousnesses are based in the sixth consciousness, mind consciousness. All eight consciousnesses are in this way connected and interdependent.

The senses from which these five consciousnesses arise are sometimes referred to as “gates” because all of the objects of our perception—all dharmas—enter our consciousness through sensory contact with them. For this reason, it is important to learn how to guard these gates into our consciousness, to choose wisely what we allow to enter and become seeds. The way we do this is through mindfulness.
 

Twenty-Eight

Based on mind consciousness, 
the five sense consciousnesses, 
separately or together with mind consciousness, 
manifest like waves on water.

Twenty-Nine
Their field of perception is things-in-themselves.
Their mode of perception is direct. 
Their nature can be wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral. 
They operate on the sense organs and the sensation center of the brain.

Thirty
They arise with the 
universal, particular, and wholesome, 
the basic and secondary unwholesome, 
and the indeterminate mental formations.