Eight Consciousnesses
[3] This eighth consciousness is said to store the impressions (vāsanāḥ) of previous experiences, which form the seeds (bīja) of future karma in this life and in the next after rebirth.
All surviving schools of Buddhist thought accept – "in common" – the existence of the first six primary consciousnesses (Sanskrit: vijñāna, Tibetan: རྣམ་ཤེས་, Wylie: rnam-shes).
[4] The internally coherent Yogācāra school associated with Maitreya, Asaṅga, and Vasubandhu, however, uniquely – or "uncommonly" – also posits the existence of two additional primary consciousnesses, kliṣṭamanovijñāna and ālayavijñāna, in order to explain the workings of karma.
Based on the Kangyur, the Kagyu scholar 3rd Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje additionally points out that it must also have an immediate aspect, with the power to give rise to the six primary consciousnesses.
It gained its place in a distinctly Yogācāra system over a period of some three hundred years stretching from 100 to 400 C.E., culminating in the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, a short text by Asaṅga (circa 350), setting out a systematic presentation of the ālaya-vijñāna doctrine developed over the previous centuries.
Each of these Six Common Consciousnesses – referred to in Sanskrit as pravṛttivijñānāni[16][θ] – are posited on the basis of valid straightforward cognition,[ι] on any individual practitioner's part, of sensory data input experienced solely by means of their bodily sense faculties.
The derivation of this particular dual classification schema for these first six, so-called "common" consciousnesses has its origins in the first four Nikāyas of the Sutta Pitaka – the second division of the Tipitaka in the Pali Canon – as first committed to writing during the Theravada school's fourth council at Sri Lanka in 83 (BCE).
[5] Deluded awareness[μ] Tibetan: ཉོན་ཡིད་རྣམ་ཤེས་, Wylie: nyon-yid rnam-shes This Eighth Consciousness, posited on the basis of inferential cognition, is asserted, uncommonly, in Yogācāra.
Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas.
"[32]The early Buddhist texts speak of anusayā (Sanskrit: anuśayāḥ), the “underlying tendencies” or “latent dispositions” which keep beings caught in the circle of samsara.
[2] The Sautrāntika school of Buddhism, which relied closely on the sutras, developed a theory of seeds (bīja, 種子) in the mindstream (cittasaṃtāna, 心相續,[33] lit.
According to Lambert Schmithausen, the first mention of the concept occurs in the Yogācārabhumiśāstra, which posits a basal consciousness that contains seeds for future cognitive processes.
The store-house consciousness accumulates all potential energy as seeds (bīja) for the mental (nāma) and physical (rūpa) manifestation of one's existence (nāmarūpa).
The ālayavijñāna is also described in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra as the "mind which has all the seeds" (sarvabījakam cittam) which enters the womb and develops based on two forms of appropriation or attachment (upādāna); to the material sense faculties, and to predispositions (vāsanāḥ) towards conceptual proliferations (prapañca).
It is also called mind ("citta") because it is heaped up and accumulated by [the six cognitive objects, i.e.:] visual forms, sounds, smells, flavors, tangibles and dharmas.
[43]In a seemingly innovative move, the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra states that the alayavijñana is always active subliminally and occurs simultaneously with, "supported by and depending upon" the six sense consciousnesses.
[note 2] The store consciousness, while being originally immaculate in itself, contains a "mysterious mixture of purity and defilement, good and evil".
It was seen as "something akin to the Hindu notions of ātman (permanent, invariant self) and prakṛti (primordial substrative nature from which all mental, emotional and physical things evolve)."
According to Lusthaus, the critique led by the end of the eighth century to the rise of the logico-epistemic tradition of Yogācāra and a hybrid school combining Tathāgatagarbha thought with basic Yogācāra doctrines:[47] The logico-epistemological wing in part sidestepped the critique by using the term citta-santāna, "mind-stream", instead of ālaya-vijñāna, for what amounted to roughly the same idea.
[55] He writes that the three layers of the mind (citta, manas, and vijñāna) as presented by Asaṅga are also mentioned in the Pāli Canon: Thus we can see that 'Vijñāna' represents the simple reaction or response of the sense organs when they come in contact with external objects.
[56]According to Thomas McEvilley, although Vasubandhu had postulated numerous ālāya-vijñāna-s, a separate one for each individual person in the parakalpita,[note 2] this multiplicity was later eliminated in the Fǎxiàng and Huayan metaphysics.
