Storehouse Consciousness and the Unconscious: A Comparative Study of Xuan Zang and Freud on the Subliminal Mind

The postulation of storehouse consciousness, ālayavijñāna, is a major theoretical accomplishment of the Yogācāra School of Buddhism. It is formulated as a subliminal consciousness to account for our sense of self and the continuity of our experience without resorting to any form of reification, a taboo in Mahāyāna Buddhism. Its subliminal character has tempted some Buddhist scholars to compare it with the unconscious in modern psychoanalysis. However, ālayavijñāna was developed in a radically different cultural, historical, and philosophical milieu from the modern notion of the unconscious. Hence, before using the term unconscious to interpret ālayavijñāna, we should carefully investigate the two concepts and the larger theoretical paradigms within which they are respectively located. Through a comparative study this article addresses several fundamental differences between them and explores some possible reasons behind such differences by revealing certain basic operative presuppositions embedded in the two formulations of the subliminal consciousness.