Alaya

See also :

ālaya : [m.] Alaya
An abbreviation of Alaya-vijanana. Alaya is a sort of eternal substance or matter, creative and containing all forms; when considered as a whole, it is non-existent, or contains nothing; when considered phenomenal, it fills the universe. It seems to be of the nature of materialism. It is the store or totality of consciousness both absolute and relative. It is described as the fundamental mind-consciousness of conscious beings, which lays hold of all the experience of the individual life, and which stores and holds the germs of all affairs.

It is the last of Eighth Consciousness from which the Wisdom of Great Round Mirror is derived.

1. abode; roosting place;
2. desire; attachment;
3. pretence.

Alaya (Skt. ālaya; Tib. ཀུན་གཞི་, kun shyi; Wyl. kun gzhi) — the universal ground or basis. Longchenpa describes alaya in this way:


“It is unenlightenment and a neutral state, which belongs to the category of mind and mental events, and it has become the foundation of all karmas and ‘traces’ of samsara and nirvana.”^[1]	༈ [[ངོ་བོ་ནི་སེམས་སེམས་བྱུང་གིས་ཉེ་བར་བསྡུས་པས་འཁོར་འདས་ཀྱི་ལས་དང་བག་ཆགས་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱི་རྟེན་དུ་གྱུར་པ་སྟེ། མ་རིག་པའི་ལུང་མ་བསྟན་ཏེ]]།

In the Lamdré teachings however, it refers to the indivisible union of awareness and emptiness. This is also how the term is used when it appears in the Seven Points of Mind Training.

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Footnotes

↑ From the Treasury of Word and Meaning; translation from Tulku Thondup in The Practice of Dzogchen (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 1996 & 2002), page 211.

==Further Reading==