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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).[1] The internally coherent Yogācāra school associated with Maitreya, Asaṅga, and Vasubandhu, however, uniquely – or "uncommonly" – also posits the existence of two additional primary consciousnesses, kliṣṭamanas and ālayavijñāna, in order to explain the workings of karma.[2] The first six of these primary consciousnesses comprise the five sensory faculties together with mental consciousness, which is counted as the sixth.[3] According to Gareth Sparham,
The ālaya-vijñāna doctrine arose on the Indian subcontinent about one thousand years before Tsong kha pa. 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 Mahāyāna-saṁgraha, a short text by Asaṅga (circa 350), setting out a systematic presentation of the ālaya-vijñāna doctrine developed over the previous centuries. It is the doctrine found in this text in particular that Tsong kha pa, in his Ocean of Eloquence, treats as having been revealed in toto by the Buddha and transmitted to suffering humanity through the Yogācāra founding saints (Tib. shing rta srol byed): Maitreya[-nātha], Asaṅga, and Vasubandhu.[2]
While some noteworthy modern scholars of the Gelug tradition (which was originally founded by Tsongkhapa's reforms to Atisha's Kadam school) assert that the ālayavijñāna is posited only in the Cittamatra philosophical tenet system, all non-Gelug schools of Tibetan buddhism maintain that the ālayavijñāna is accepted by the various Madhyamaka schools, as well.[4] The Yogācāra eightfold network of primary consciousnesses – aṣṭavijñāna in Sanskrit (from compounding aṣṭa, "eight", with vijñāna, "primary consciousness"), or Tibetan: རྣམ་ཤེས་ཚོགས་བརྒྱད་, Wylie: rnam-shes tshogs-brgyad – is roughly sketched out in the following table.
| Subgroups | Name[α]ofConsciousness[β] | Associated Nonstatic Phœnomena[γ] in terms of Three Circles of Action[δ] | |||||
| English | Sanskrit | Tibetan | Chinese | Physical Form[ε] | Type of Cognition[ζ] | Cognitive Sensor[η] | |
| I. – VI.
| |||||||
| I.
Eye Consciousness |
cakṣur-vijñāna[2] | ༡ | Sight(s) | Seeing | Eyes | ||
| II.
Ear Consciousness |
śrotra-vijñāna[2] | ༢ | Sound(s) | Hearing | Ears | ||
| III.
Nose Consciousness |
༣ | Smell(s) | Smell | Nose | |||
| IV.
Tongue Consciousness |
༤ | Taste(s) | Taste | Tongue | |||
| V.
Body Consciousness |
༥ | Feeling(s) | Touch | Body | |||
| VI.
Mental Consciousness[κ] |
mano-vijñāna[2] | ༦ | 意識 | Thought(s) | Ideation | Mind | |
| VII.
This Seventh Consciousness, posited on the basis of straightforward cognition in combination with inferential cognition,[λ] is asserted, uncommonly, in Yogācāra.[2] |
VII.
Deluded awareness[μ] |
Manas, kliṣṭa-manas[2] | ༧ | Self-grasping | Disturbing emotion or attitude (Skt.: klesha)[ν] | Mind | |
| VIII.
This Eighth Consciousness, posited on the basis of inferential cognition, is asserted, uncommonly, in Yogācāra.[2] |
VIII.
All-encompassing foundation consciousness[ξ] |
ālāya-vijñāna,[2] bīja-vijñāna | ༨ | 藏識,
種子識, 阿賴耶識, or 本識 |
Memory | Reflexive awareness[ο] | Mind |
Unlike the Western view of consciousness as a general faculty that can be aware of all sensory and mental objects, Buddhism differentiates six types of consciousness, each of which is specific to one sensory field or to the mental field. A primary consciousness cognizes merely the essential nature (ngo-bo) of an object, which means the category of phenomenon to which something belongs. For example, eye consciousness cognizes a sight as merely a sight. The Chittamatra schools add two more types of primary consciousness to make their list of an eightfold network of primary consciousnesses (rnam-shes tshogs-brgyad): deluded awareness (nyon-yid), alayavijnana (kun-gzhi rnam-shes, all-encompassing foundation consciousness, storehouse consciousness). Alayavijnana is an individual consciousness, not a universal one, underlying all moments of cognition. It cognizes the same objects as the cognitions it underlies, but is a nondetermining cognition of what appears to it (snang-la ma-nges-pa, inattentive cognition) and lacks clarity of its objects. It carries karmic legacies (sa-bon) and the mental impressions of memories, in the sense that both are nonstatic abstractions imputed on the alayavijnana. The continuity of an individual alayavijnana ceases with the attainment of enlightenment.
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Within a cognition of an object, the awareness of merely the essential nature of the object that the cognition focuses on. Primary consciousness has the identity-nature of being an individualizing awareness.
An unspecified, nonobstructive, individual consciousness that underlies all cognition, cognizes the same objects as the cognitions it underlies, but is a nondetermining cognition of what appears to it and lacks clarity of its objects. It carries the karmic legacies of karma and the mental impressions of memories, in the sense that they are imputed on it. It is also translated as 'foundation consciousness' and, by some translators, as 'storehouse consciousness.' According to Gelug, asserted only by the Chittamatra system; according to non-Gelug, assserted by both the Chittamatra and Madhyamaka systems.
A combination of sounds that are assigned a meaning.
A class of ways of being aware of something that cognizes merely the essential nature of its object, such as its being a sight, a sound, a mental object, etc. Consciousness may be either sensory or mental, and there are either six or eight types. The term has nothing to do with the Western concept of conscious versus unconscious.
Phenomena that are affected and supported by causes and circumstances and, consequently, change from moment to moment, and which produce effects. Their streams of continuity may have a beginning and an end, a beginning and no end, no beginning but an end, or no beginning and no end. Some translators render the term as 'impermanent phenomena.' They include forms of physical phenomena, ways of being aware of something, and noncongruent affecting variables, which are neither of the two.
Three aspects of an action that are all equally void of true existence: (1) the individual performing the action, (2) the object upon or toward which the action is committed, and (3) the action itself. Occasionally, as in the case of the action of giving, the object may refer to the object given. The existence of each of these is established dependently on the others. Sometimes translated as 'the three spheres' of an action.
Nonstatic phenomena that can either (1) transform into another form of physical phenomenon when two or more of them come into contact with each other, such as water and earth which can transform into mud, or (2) be known as what they are by analyzing their directional parts, such as the sight of a vase seen in a dream. Forms of physical phenomena include the nonstatic phenomena of forms and eye sensors, sounds and ear sensors, smells and nose sensors, tastes and tongue sensors, phyiscal sensations and body sensors, and forms of physical phenomena included only among cognitive stimulators that are all phenomena. Equivalent to the aggregate of forms of physical phenomena.
(1) The act of cognizing or knowing something, but without necessarily knowing what it is or what it means. It may be either valid or invalid, conceptual or nonconceptual . This is the most general term for knowing something. (2) The 'package' of a primary consciousness, its accompanying mental factors (subsidiary awarenesses), and the cognitive object shared by all of them. According to some systems, a cognition also includes reflexive awareness.
The dominating condition that determines the type of cognition a way of being aware of something is. In the case of the five types of sensory cognition, it is the photosensitive cells of the eyes, the sound-sensitive cells of the ears, the smell-sensitive cells of the nose, the taste-sensitive cells of the tongue, and the physical-sensation-sensitive cells of the body. In the case of mental cognition, it is the immediately preceding moment of cognition. Some translators render the term as 'sense power.'
Straightforward cognition that is nonfallacious. See: straightforward cognition.
The Theravada and Sarvastivada Schools each held their own fourth councils. The Theravada School held its fourth council in 83 BCE in Sri Lanka. In the face of various groups having splintered off from Theravada over differences in interpretation of Buddha words (sic.), Maharakkhita and five hundred Theravada elders met to recite and write down Buddha's words in order to preserve their authenticity. This was the first time Buddha's teachings were put into written form and, in this case, they were rendered into the Pali language. This version of The Three Basket-like Collections, The Tipitaka, is commonly known as The Pali Canon. The other Hinayana Schools, however, continued to transmit the teachings in oral form.
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A primary consciousness that can take any existent phenomenon as its object and which relies on merely the previous moment of cognition as its dominating condition and not on any physical sensors.
A valid conceptual way of cognizing an obscure object through reliance on a correct line of reasoning as its basis.
A primary consciousness that is aimed at the alayavijnana in the Chittamatra system, or at the alaya for habits in the dzogchen system, and grasps at it to be the 'me' to be refuted.
A subsidiary awareness (mental factor) that, when it arises, causes oneself to lose peace of mind and incapacitates oneself so that one loses self-control. An indication that one is experiencing a disturbing emotion or attitude is that it makes oneself and/or others feel uncomfortable. Some translators render this term as 'afflictive emotions' or 'emotional afflictions.'
(1) The cognitive faculty within a cognition, asserted in the Sautrantika and Chittamatra tenet systems, that takes as its cognitive object the consciousness within the cognition that it is part of. It also cognizes the validity or invalidity of the cognition that it is part of, and accounts for the ability to recall the cognition. (2) In the non-Gelug schools, this cognitive faculty becomes reflexive deep awareness -- that part of an arya's nonconceptual cognition of voidness that cognizes the two truths of that nonconceptual cognition.
