system also, the third item, consciousness, is usually
understood as the consciousness at the moment of
conception, and thus it retains its nature as described
in the very early texts.
According to Yogacara tradition, at the time of one’s
death, a powerful attachment to one’s own existence
arises and makes one’s consciousness grasp the next
life. Furthermore, according to both the Sarvastivada
and Yogacara schools, the consciousness in the INTER-
MEDIATE STATEsees the parents making love. If the be-
ing is about to be reborn as a boy, he is attached to the
mother and hates the father. If the being is about to be
reborn as a girl, she is attached to the father and hates
the mother. Driven by this perverted thought, the be-
ing enters the womb, and the consciousness merges
with the united semen and “blood,” after which the
semen-blood combination becomes a sentient embryo.
Even when a being is about to be reborn in a hell, it
misconceives the hell as something desirable, and dri-
ven by its attachment to the “desirable place,” it has-
tens to the hell. Thus, in these cases also, the basic
structure of consciousness attached to some object and
bound to the realm of samsara resembles the structure
of consciousness found in the less developed stage of
Buddhist causation theory.
The alayavijñana theory and the theory of
the eight consciousnesses
In the YOGACARA SCHOOL, consciousness that merges
with the semen-blood combination is understood as
the storehouse consciousness(ALAYAVIJN
ANA). Accord-
ing to this school, the storehouse consciousness, the
deepest layer of one’s subconsciousness, maintains all
the residue of past KARMA(ACTION) as “seeds,” which
will give rise to their fruits in the future. This theory
enabled the Yogacara school to explain the problems
of reincarnation and karmic retribution without re-
sorting to the concept of substantial soul.
The storehouse consciousness is also linked to the
idealistic theory propounded by Yogacara. Buddhism
had an idealistic tendency from the early stages of its
history, and the state of the external world was linked
to the collective karma/desire of SENTIENT BEINGS. An
interesting example is found in a Buddhist cosmogo-
nical legend, which states that as the desire of sentient
beings became more gross, the surrounding world be-
came less and less attractive. On the basis of medita-
tive experiences, the Yogacara tradition elaborated this
tendency into a sophisticated philosophical system in
which the world that people experience is actually a
projection of their own consciousness. The seeds kept
in the storehouse consciousness are considered to be
the source of this projected world.
Another important function of the storehouse con-
sciousness is the physiological maintenance of the
body. Since the early stages of Buddhism, conscious-
ness was considered to be the element that distin-
guishes animate beings from inanimate matter. Unless
consciousness appropriates (i.e., maintains) the body,
the body becomes a senseless corpse. Since, however,
the stream of consciousnesses on the surface level is
sometimes interrupted (as in the states of dreamless
sleep, fainting, or deep absorption), it was difficult to
explain how the body is maintained during those un-
conscious periods. Because the storehouse conscious-
ness continues to operate even when the surface
consciousnesses do not arise, the introduction of the
storehouse consciousness solves the problem of phys-
iological maintenance of the body.
In addition to the storehouse consciousness, the
Yogacara school introduced another subconscious
layer of mind, namely the defiled mind(klistamanas).
This is a subconscious ego-consciousness that is always
operative in the depths of the mind. According to the
Yogacara system, the defiled mind is always directed
to the storehouse consciousness and mistakes the lat-
ter for a substantial self. By introducing the concept of
defiled mind, the Yogacara school pointed out that the
subconscious ego-mind is hiding behind the scene
even when one is trying to do good things on the con-
scious level. Thus, from this point of view, the minds
of deluded, ordinary sentient beings are always defiled,
regardless of the moral nature of the surface con-
sciousnesses. Thus, in addition to the conventional six
types of consciousness, the Yogacara school introduced
two subconscious layers of mind—defiled mind and
storehouse consciousness—and constructed a system
of eight types of consciousness. These eight con-
sciousnesses are linked to citta,manas, and vijñanain
the following way: The storehouse consciousness cor-
responds to citta,the defiled mind to manas, and the
conventional six consciousnesses to vijñana.Simultaneous versus successive operations
of plural consciousnesses
Since the Yogacara model of eight consciousnesses
means that two layers of unconscious mind are always
operating behind the conventional six consciousnesses,
it naturally presupposes the simultaneous operations
of different types of consciousness. This position, how-
ever, was not uncontroversial among Buddhist tradi-
tions. Since the stream of consciousness represents aCONSCIOUSNESS, THEORIES OF