Alaya.

[sky]

Originally Posted by Gem

Not really sure, but 'consciousness' as used i Buddhism refers to the senses - the five we know of with the addition of the mind as a thought perception.

The mind is again split into 3 with thought perception already mentioned, the reactive mind response, and lastly, the entire collation of past experience - either consciously accessible as memory or forgotten.

Of first 5 the last is physical sensation. The other 4 senses are separated as one can not smell a sight or hear a hear a taste, but all the senses enter the body's neurological system; hence all the senses unify at the level of the sensations as the qualia or the 'what it's like' of any experience.

The reactive mind is reacting at this physical sensation level. The senses detect a thing and is noticed, that produces sensational change throughout the body, also noticed, and then the personal reaction occurs.

When a reaction occurs, what is called a sankara is formed, and these remain for a duration. Some short lived as the reaction was mild, and other stronger reactions are etched more deeply and last longer. May reactions are occurring unconsciously, continuously, and these compel both distraction and mindless action.

The storehouse is where these sankara can pile up, referred to as impurity or defilement, and the meditation is not the process of ridding these per se, but the cessation of adding any more, which means the cessation of reactivities that create them.

The old ones in the storehouse start to burn off their psychic energy because there is no reaction to energise them. The sankara arising also causes sensation, to which reaction occurs, which creates sankara, which rises creating sensation which reacts as a sankara, this is the craving for craving itself, and the aversion of aversion, where it becomes such a human complex. Therefore, the meditation is at the sensation level and the mind without reaction, and that awareness is key to the cessation of reaction, and consequentually, the purification of the storehouse of sankara.

Interesting, thanks Gem