The notion of the store consciousness arose out of early problems surrounding the continuity of both karmic potential and the afflictions 煩惱 (kleśa; nyon mongs) in a latent state 隨眠 (anuśaya; bag la nyal ba) that had been generated by the Abhidharma emphasis upon momentary processes of mind. How, after all, could these two essential components of saṃsāric existence, which are eliminated only toward the end of the path, continuously persist if oneʼs mental stream 相續 (saṃtāna; rgyud) were comprised solely of whatever dharmas 法 (chos) were momentarily present and manifest in mind?2 The ālayavijñāna thus came to denote the mental processes that underlie each and every moment of the traditional six forms of manifest cognitive awareness 六識 (pravṛtti-vijñāna; 'jug pa'i rnam par shes pa)—a term coined to distinguish it from the continuous yet subliminal ālaya 阿賴耶 or 'home' awareness. Consonant with traditional definitions of cognitive awareness (vijñāna; rnam par shes pa; 識), the ālaya awareness is said to dependently arise based, on the one hand, on both the material sense faculties and the cognitive and affective formations (saṃskāra; 'du byed; 行), which comprise oneʼs sentient existence, as well as, on the other hand, its own specific object, an indistinct (asaṃdvidita; aparicchinna) apprehension of an external world 器世間 (bhājana-loka; snod kyi 'jig rten). Moreover, the ālaya awareness is said to 'grow, develop, and increase' —also like traditional forms of vijñāna (S II 65, 67, 101; III 54)—by the seeds of karma 種子 (bīja; sa bon) and the impressions 熏習 (vāsanā; bag chags) of the afflictions which have accumulated 'since beginningless time' through the various experiences of conscious awareness 轉識 (pravṛtti-vijñāna).

Although this subliminal ālaya awareness thus enjoys a continuously evolving and reciprocal relationship with active aspects of consciousness, it still reflects—in Indian Buddhist scholasticism at least—its original function as the central locus of accumulated karmic potential and latent afflictions, effectively constituting oneʼs saṃsāric existence and serving as the virtual 'subject' of saṃsāra (also not unlike earlier notions of vijñāna). It is for this reason that ignorant beings typically mistake the ālaya awareness as their self (ātman; bdag; 我), a form of ignorance and self-grasping that was thought to so continuously and subliminally arise that it too came to be considered a distinctive mental process, called 'afflictive mentation'  染汚意 (kliṣṭa-manas; nyon mongs pa can gyi yid) and considered in the Chinese tradition as the seventh consciousness, with the ālayavijñāna as the eighth 第八識.

Commensurate with these multiple functions, the ālayavijñāna is denoted by a variety of synonyms, most importantly: the root consciousness 本識 (mūla-vijñāna; rtsa ba'i rnam par shes pa), the 'consciousness with all the seeds'  一切種子識 (sarvabījaka-citta; sa bon thams cad pa'i sems), and the appropriating consciousness 阿陀那識 (ādāna-vijñāna; len pa'i rnam par shes pa).

Although in its systematic descriptions in early Yogâcāra treatises such as the Yogâcārabhūmi 瑜伽論 and the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha 攝大乘論, the ālayavijñāna is largely commensurate with other Indian Buddhist notions of consciousness (vijñāna 識) (indeed it was specifically couched in Abhidharmic terms), the very metaphors used to describe it—as a repository consciousness that receives and stores the karmic seeds which thereafter serve as the cause 因緣 (hetu; rgyu) of conscious experience—seem to have invited its interpretation as a reified entity, as an unchanging mind which serves as the sole basis, the primordial ground, from which the entire phenomenal world arises. And this in spite of the fact that Indian Yogâcāra doctrine itself explicitly and repeatedly states that taking the ālayavijñāna as a self 我見 (ātmadṛṣṭi; bdag tu lta ba) is one of the main causes of accumulating karma and perpetuating saṃsāric existence.

This tendency seems to be particularly pronounced in certain later Chinese and Tibetan traditions, but was no doubt exacerbated by the identification—in a different set of texts such as the Laṅkâvatāra-sūtra 楞伽經 and, later and more importantly, the Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith—of the ālayavijñāna with the tathāgatagarbha 如來藏 (de bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po), the womb or matrix of the Tathāgata. Although this identification was unquestioned in most later forms of Chinese Buddhism (aided, no doubt, by an early translation of the ālayavijñāna as the 'store' consciousness 藏識, the first character of which, 藏, was also the standard translation of garbha), it is not found in the standard treatises of Indian Yogâcāra Buddhism. The sixth-century Indian translator Paramârthaʼs 眞諦 response to this discrepancy was to preserve the ālayavijñāna as a defiled, eighth consciousness, which must be eliminated upon awakening, while interpolating into his texts an additional, undefiled, ninth consciousness, an amala-vijñāna 阿摩羅識, which persists after the ālayavijñāna is eliminated. One of Xuanzangʼs 玄奘 aims in retranslating such Yogâcāra texts as the Yogâcārabhūmi and the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha was to recover the earlier, and to his mind more orthodox, sense of the ālayavijñāna as the locus of defiled existence unrelated to the notion of the tathāgatagarbha. Similar developments occurred in Tibetan schools associated with the doctrine of 'extrinsic emptiness' (gzhan stong), who self-consciously departed from Indian Yogâcāra models and posited a primordial ālaya wisdom (kun gzhi ye shes) apart from defiled and discursive forms of vijñāna (rnam shes).

These varying notions of post-nirvanic forms of consciousness, typically expressed in Mahāyāna traditions as a transformation from vijñāna into jñāna, reflect similar ambiguities found in the earliest collections of Buddhist teachings, in which the consciousness of a Buddha or Arhat, for example, is no longer bound by grasping or appropriation (anupādāna), but is said to be 'nonabiding' or 'unsupported'  無住, 無依 (appatiṭṭhita-viññāṇa; D III 105; S I 122; S II 66, 103; S III 54).

In sum, this core Yogâcāra concept touches upon some of central-most concerns of Buddhist soteriology and analysis of mind, but its interpretations vary radically depending upon which school, which text, and which time period one is investigating.

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