Sowing Seeds In the Soil of the Mind – The Alaya

Our FBA Podcast this week is a talk by Ratnaprabha entitled Sowing Seeds In the Soil of the Mind – The Alaya.

The alaya, or storehouse consciousness, is the Buddhist equivalent of the unconscious mind. It is like a garden, in which every experience and action sows a seed which may later sprout and create our unfolding life. This talk describes how this relates to the six sense awarenesses, the mind as a sense, and the contaminated mind which reads everything in terms of self and not self. Mindfulness finds a creative path between leaving the alaya on autopilot, and allowing the contaminated mind to interfere and fill the garden with weeds and rubbish.