The Buddhist Unconscious
Summary
A scholarly study of how Yogācāra Buddhists in fifth-century India mapped a layer of mind beneath awareness, the ālaya-vijñāna or ‘storehouse consciousness’, and argued for it with care. William Waldron reads it alongside Western thinking on the unconscious, from Freud and Jung on, including a notion first put forward 2,500 years ago: that no substantial self underlies our thoughts.
Rationale
It’s a scholarly check on our list of concepts, which names storehouse consciousness alongside the ‘collective unconscious’ while warning that such ideas aren’t “interchangeable”.
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