Manasikara is a mode of the mind or will which has to do with our attention. We are generally, during our day to day transactions, giving our attention to something. When a student is studying for a test in the university library, this is the manasikara at work. The manas or attention is fixed (kara) on studying. In the case of a male student, if an attractive female student sits across from him, all of a sudden his manasikara shifts to her! She becomes his new focus.
More specifically, manasikara is attention that fixes (kara) on a particular target or object. This target might either be ayonisas or yonisas, respectively, non-fundamental or fundamental (the attractive female student would be in the category of ayonisas). A better example, from the perspective of spirituality, ayonisas is what is phenomenal and superficial. On the other hand, yonisas can be characterized as the ultimate matrix or medium from which phenomena originate.
Those who are in the advanced stage of spiritual development are always fixedly attending (manasikara) to the fundamental medium (ayonisas) of all things which is unchanging.
Yoniso manasikara, it should be mentioned, is a necessary factor for stream-entry (S.v.347) whereby one, for the first time, experiences the animative principle of the physical body that falls under the category of yonisas. To be sure, one cannot attend to the superficial (ayoniso manasikara) and expect to win nirvana. It is only when we experience the physical body as being moved by a real and immaterial power that we enter the stream to nirvana. More importantly, it is by yoniso manasikara that one develops and cultivates the Noble Eightfold Path, according to the Buddha. Worth adding, “noble” or aryan refers to someone who is aware of yoniso; who can directly attend to it.
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