tman_and_moksa

SR No.: 020053
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University
Publication Year: 1965
Total Pages: 901
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 180

148
For Private And Personal
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
peculiar thing, known as the Alaya Vijñāna (afgia) which Th. Stcherbatsky translates as 'store-consciousness. This alaya-vijñāna or store-consciousness acts as a substratum to numerous ideas and imaginary entities. The alaya-vijñāna acts as the substratum of all changing, evanescent ideas. It serves as the permanent background of the endless variety of feelings and ideas, common to all minds. It exists as a stable ground for all the fleeting and momentary states of consciousness. It is general and common to all the infinite separate states of consciousness. It contains in itself the whole world which is constituted of ideas. Particular phenomena are manifestations of the alaya-vijñana, according to the special particular conditions in which they appear. As'vaghosa, Aryasanga and Dinnaga agree in holding the peculiar idea of 'alaya-vijñāna' (encufasa). Th. Stcherbatsky describes it in the following way The alaya-vijñāna is here a new element, a store house, a real granary, where the seeds (bija) of all future ideas and the traces of all past deeds are stored up." It stretches in the past, present and future. It is not only a stable and unchanging ground of the various ideas, but is equally active in so far as it manifests itself by means of the ideas and feelings which are its real modifications. All modes of consciousness are ultimately reducible to this alaya-consciousness, and therefore, it can be held to be analogous to the Primary matter of the Samkhyas. It is not a dead and blank Absolute which is devoid of change and
1 Stcherbatsky Th. : Conception of Buddhist Nirvāṇa, p. 32.
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Atman and Mokşa