So, here goes... Our first explanation is offered by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Yogacara school of Buddhism dating back to the fourth century. Yogacara developed out of Indian Mahayana Buddhism.
Among other things, Yogacara discourse explains how our human experience is completely constructed by mind.
The Storehouse Consciousness
According to the traditional explanation, the theory of the consciousnesses attempted to explain all the phenomena of cyclic existence, including how rebirth occurs and precisely how karma functions on an individual basis. It addressed questions that had long vexed Buddhist philosophers, such as,
- 'If one carries out a good or evil act, why and how is it that the effects of that act do not appear immediately?'
The answer given by later Yogācārins was the store consciousness (Sanskrit: ālayavijñāna), also known as the basal, or eighth consciousness. It simultaneously acts as a storage place for karmic latencies and as a fertile matrix of predispositions that bring karma to a state of fruition.
- 'Inasfar as they do not appear immediately, where is this karma waiting for its opportunity to play out?'
The likeness of this process to the cultivation of plants led to the creation of the metaphor of seeds (Sanskrit: bīja) to explain the way karma is stored in the eighth consciousness.
In the Yogācāra formulation, all experience without exception is said to result from the ripening of karma. The seemingly external world is merely a "by-product" (adhipati-phala) of karma.
The term vāsanā ("perfuming") is also used, and Yogācārins debated whether vāsāna and bija were essentially the same, the seeds were the effect of the perfuming, or whether the perfuming simply affected the seeds. The type, quantity, quality and strength of the seeds determine where and how a sentient being will be reborn: one's race, sex, social status, proclivities, bodily appearance and so forth. The conditioning of the mind resulting from karma is called saṃskāra.
The Treatise on Action (Karmasiddhiprakaraṇa), also by Vasubandhu, treats the subject of karma in detail from the Yogācāra perspective. [1]Following the Yogacara philosophy, Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book, Understanding Our Mind, offers a concise and relatively easy to understand explanation on the mind's process of creating an image, or appearance, of a truly existing self.
According to Yogacara, there are Eight Consciousnesses that work together in order to create the human experience. Store consciousness is the eighth consciousness and is considered the base or ground from which all other consciousnesses (including the appearances within those consciousnesses) manifest. The seventh consciousness lying between the Store Consciousness and the Mind Consciousness is called Manas.
In terms of perception, Manas belongs to the realm of representations (as opposed to the realm of "things in themselves"). The nature of Manas is therefore a world of obscuration. Because it cannot perceive things directly, whatever is perceived by Manas is always obscured.
It arises from the ground of Store Consciousness, touches a part of it, produces an image of it, and takes this image as an object of its perception. It then regards this perceived object as a self and falls in love with it. Then it has to protect this part of store consciousness that it has objectified and attached to.
When Manas and Store Consciousness are in contact, their two energies bring about an object at the point where Manas and Store Consciousness meet and overlap.
We know that our store consciousness manifests as the world, both the instrumental world (the environment) and the sentient world (ourselves and other living beings). Our body is a manifestation of our store consciousness. Mind / body or "name and form" (namarupa), manifest through the store consciousness.
When manas is involved, however, the seeds of delusion in our store consciousness are able to manifest as mental formations, and suffering is the result.
One of the names given to store consciousness is "store for the attachment to a self." This has to do with manas.
Manas is the energy of ignorance, thirst, and craving.Here's the critical part:
It arises out of the store consciousness and then turns back to grasp a part of store consciousness (which it confusingly believes to be its self as an independently existing separate object).
The part of store consciousness that manas tries to grasp is that of the subject that perceives (darshana-bhaga). At this point, manas and store consciousness overlap and, as a result of this overlapping, an object of the grasping of manas is produced.
Manas grasps on to the image that it has created and clings to it as its object. That portion of store consciousness that is grasped by manas loses its freedom. Our mind is enslaved when it is picked up and embraced as a "self" by manas.
Manas holds on to the object of its attraction very tightly, as if to say, "You are mine."
It is kind of a love affair. In fact, manas is described as "love of self." Manas is "the lover," store consciousness is the beloved, the nature of their love is attachment -- and suffering is the result.
Based on Manas, the sixth consciousness, mind consciousness, is brought about. The mind consciousness can function independently or in conjunction with the first five sense consciousnesses of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body.
Manas also serves as our "survival instinct." If while sleeping we hear a sudden noise and wake up, that is the function of manas. If someone throws something at us, the reflex of avoiding it comes from manas. This function of manas is an instinctual defense mechanism that does not operate on wisdom. But by always trying to defend the self, it can end up destroying the self.
The activity of Manas is thinking, cognizing, measuring, reasoning, grasping and clinging.
Day and night, manas discriminates things. "I am this person. You are that person. This is mine. That is yours. This is me. That is you." Pride, anger, fear, and jealousy -- mental formations that are based in seeing ourselves as separate -- all arise from Manas.
Because Manas is filled with delusion -- craving, fear, and clinging - it does not have the capacity to touch the realm of things-in-themselves. It can never touch the realm of suchness of store consciousness. Its object is an image of a self that exists only in the realm of representation.
The attachment of Manas to a self is based on an image that it has created, just as we fall in love with our image of someone and not with the person herself.This image of the self created by the activity of Manas is the self that we are all most familiar with. According to this line of thinking, the self that we know does not have any true, separate existence anywhere within the realm of mind which includes the entire cosmos. This self is merely an image of an image.
Even so, because of ignorance we continually cling to this image as if it is truly existent. We cling to it in some ways as if our very lives depended on it, and yet it is only by learning the truth that we can begin to free ourselves from this limited view of who we have come to believe that we are, and yet are not.
References:
[1] Wikipedia.
[2] Thich Nhat Hanh, Understanding Our Mind, Parallax Press
