The History of Buddhist Thought c26.20

c26.20

store-consciousness (*ālaya-vijñāna*). When the relation between this and the consciousness of ordinary experience has to be explained, it is done by means of similes. “ Consciousness consisting of the skandhas, dhātus, and āyatanas, which are without a self or of anything of the nature of a self, arises from ignorance, karma, and craving, and it functions through being attached to grasping at things by means of the eye and all the organs, and makes the presentations of its store-mind appear as bodies and vessels, which are manifestations of its own mind (the store-consciousness). Unstable like a river, a seed, a lamp, wind, a cloud, it is subject to destruction from moment to moment.”¹