alayavijñna

Alaya-vijñāna, often translated as storehouse consciousness, is a central concept in Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy. It refers to a deepest layer of mind that serves as a substrate for experience. In the Yogācāra framework, the eightfold model of consciousness includes the five sense-consciousnesses, the mental consciousness (manovijñāna), the self-consciousness (manas), and the storehouse (alaya-vijñāna). The alaya is not a personal self or ego, but a continuous, underlying ground that conditions and underwrites mental activity.

The storehouse is said to contain the seeds (bīja) or latent dispositions (vasanas) of all experiences, including past actions and afflictive mental formations. These seeds lie dormant and only ripen under appropriate conditions, shaping future perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. Through this mechanism, alaya-vijñāna provides a continuity of consciousness across lives and initiates the flow of the other consciousnesses when conditions arise.

In practice and soteriology, the alaya is seen as both the source of habitual tendencies and the ground that can be purified. Awakening involves transforming or exhausting the defilements embedded in the seeds, altering how the alaya influences subsequent cognition. Some accounts describe liberation as a fundamental alteration of the alaya’s functioning, so that ignorance and craving no longer drive the stream of consciousness.

Historically, alaya-vijñāna was developed in early Yogācāra by Asanga and later elaborated by Vasubandhu and other scholars. It remains influential in East Asian and Tibetan Buddhist thought, though its exact interpretation varies. In modern scholarship it is sometimes discussed in relation to the notion of a deep mind or unconscious substratum, with caution regarding direct equivalence to Western concepts.