In the previous chapter, we saw that our seventh consciousness, called Manas appeared at the time of our birth and grew during our life. It is also called "defiled consciousness" (Zenma i - 染汚意), as it corresponds to the four evil passions of ego delusion (gachi - 我癡), ego vision (gaken - 我見), ego vanity (gaman - 我慢) and ego attachment (ga-ai - 我愛).

The first evil passion, ego delusion (gachi - 我癡) is ignorance of the self, which implies that we do not understand that there is no fixed thing called self. We do not understand the notion of no self. This bad passion (bonnō), prevents us from knowing the reality that there is no such thing as a permanent, fixed self that can exist without relationship to others.

The second bad passion, the vision of the self (gaken - 我見), based on the illusion of the self, causes us to see things and create an image of the world whose center is me. In the word "gaken", the "ga" part means "I am the most important", while "ken" (vision) is about constructing an image of the world of which we are the center. It is like in a world atlas made in Japan, where Japan is always the center of the world, while in an atlas made in the United States, the United States is the center of the world. In my world, I am the center; no one can be the center of the world but me. This is "gaken".

The third bad passion, ego vanity (gaman - 我慢) is that self or "ga" or "ego" that compares itself to others and always thinks "I am better than them" - or, conversely, "I want to be better than them." If I think I am not better than others, then we have another problem called "inferiority complex". Both of these extremes are considered gaman. The word arrogance doesn't quite work because "man" includes inferiority complex. "I'm no good" is part of this problem. So perhaps it can be translated as "vanity" or "smugness".

The fourth evil passion, attachment to the self (ga-ai - 我愛) is negative love or attachment to self. This ego obsession leads to attachment to "mine" and all our suffering, frustration, not being able to get what we want, being separated from what we love, etc....

At the same time, as we have already mentioned, it is also this seventh Manas consciousness which, from time immemorial, has led philosophers to ask the question: "What is the ultimate self"? In the past, this search was the common point of most Indian religions and philosophies. The Hindu sacred texts, known as the Upanishads, for example, consider the ultimate of the self to be the Ātman, which can be translated as "breath," "life principle," "soul," "Self," "essence." At the same time, the Ātman is identified with the absolute being, the universal principle that is Brahman. As in monotheistic religions and some pseudo-Buddhist currents, we see here the emergence of a higher being, a universal law, omnipotent, with which we must be in communion (harmonize).

Thus, generally, in India, the Ātman, i.e., the "self" is considered to represent the ultimate of any individual.

On this comes Shakyamuni who teaches "selflessness" (muga - 無我), thus denying the existence of the Ātman. Buddhism in fact asserts that there is no single substance that maintains its identity and exists eternally, but only an inheritance of self that arises and ceases to exist from one moment to the next. As we have already seen, all things (dharmas) appearing according to causes and conditions, have no nature of their own and are therefore empty. The notion of emptiness was widely developed, notably by Nagarjuna, the 14th heir of Shakyamuni's Dharma, who lived between the 2nd and 3rd centuries of our era.

Now, in India, there was an even more important thought than the notion of Ātman, namely that of the saṃsāra (rinne - 輪廻) otherwise known as transmigration, the cycle of lives and deaths. This is an incredibly frightening thought, that we continue to be born and die in many worlds depending on the goodness or badness of our actions (karma). This idea, deeply rooted in the Indian mind, could not be denied even by Buddhism, which was an emerging idea at the time. On the contrary, Buddhism willingly adopted it as the main theoretical pillar of its own doctrine.

Here, the already difficult task of searching for the ultimate self met a new challenge. In other words, a contradiction arose between the theory of no-self and the theory of samsara. How can one justify transmigration when one advocates the absence of the self? If there is rebirth in the cycle of life and death, what is the support for this transmigration?

It was the thought of "nothing but consciousness," initiated by Asaṅga and his younger brother Vasubandhu, that, between the 4th and 5th centuries CE, resolved this contradiction. In a word, in response to Nagarjuna's (middle school) assertion that "everything is empty," the Nothingness Consciousness believes that only the mind that recognizes that "everything is empty" exists. Asaṅga and Vasubandhu explained that behind the six surface consciousnesses and the seventh consciousness Manas, there exists a deeper eighth consciousness called Alaya, which is the ultimate form of self-existence and at the same time the subject of reincarnations in the cycle of lives and deaths. The discovery of the eighth consciousness allowed Buddhist thought to establish a new theoretical system. In particular, they used the concept of Alaya to formulate a brilliant theory on the question of the creation of the universe, namely: "How does the real world, including the self, come into being? This theory is called the conditioned production of Alaya consciousness (Alaya-shiki engi - 阿頼耶識縁起) which explains the origin of all phenomena.

As we have already seen, every phenomenal existence appears because of direct causes (causes) and auxiliary causes (conditions). This is the concept of conditioned production. The things that arise in accordance with this law of origin are the five "skandhas", i.e. the five aggregates (form, perception, conceptualization, reaction and consciousness), the constituent elements of our body and mind. Basically, the question that Buddhism has asked itself is how human beings are and should be. This attitude is universal in Buddhism. However, with the emergence of the eighth consciousness, attention began to be paid not only to human existence, but also to the natural world around it as an entity evident from the law of conditioned production. Alaya consciousness creates not only the human mind and body, but also the mountains, rivers, plants and trees that exist around us. It can be said here that with the eighth consciousness the strictly spiritualist theory of the creation of the universe has been completed.

There is therefore a major difference between monotheistic religions and Buddhism, in the sense that in these religions of the external path, a superior being, God, created all things including the human being, whereas in Buddhism, it is each of us who creates our personal universe.

Moreover, this theory of creation, which considers that even the things we believe to exist outside of ourselves come from our own primordial mind, is not the result of simple philosophical interest or speculation. Indeed, in the background of its creation, there was a strong religious and ethical imperative not to become attached to things in the external world. Attachment is the trigger for suffering. This is why Buddhism teaches "Be without attachment. In reality, however, we are subject to countless obsessions. I want money, I want to have my own house, I want to be successful, I want the new Playstation, I want the latest IPhone, I want this, I want that..., desires that everyone has. Why, then, do such attachments and desires arise? It is because we believe that money, a house, being a CEO exist and that if we get them or become one, we will have a happy life. In a word, it is precisely because we are implicitly aware that things in the external world are undeniably real that we become attached to them.

However, Buddhism teaches that "the self and the phenomena of the outer world are created by our own mind, especially the eighth consciousness. Separated from our own mind, these phenomena have no reality. One will say to me then, "however, I see the mountains, I smell the flowers, I am conscious to exist"! Certainly, there are mountains, there are flowers and I exist. But all that is only phenomena within the mental activity of the self. In fact, it is not that the mountain is in the external world and that the mind sees it, in reality, the mind is dichotomized into a part that has the appearance of the mountain (the mind as objective) and another part that sees it (the mind as subjective), and the phenomenon of seeing the mountain occurs on the basis of the opposition between the two. To put it more simply, one does not see the mountain because it exists, but it exists because one sees it.

Thus, the Alaya consciousness is the fundamental body from which all existence arises. For example, let's say we have a pencil in front of us. This pencil, the sensory organ called the eye, and the function of seeing the pencil all originate from the Alaya consciousness. More generally, the natural world around us (the receptacle world = kiseken-器世間), our physical body (the root endowed body = Ukonjin-有根身) and subjective cognitive actions such as sensation, perception and thought (the various consciousnesses) are all born out of the modifications of this Alaya Consciousness, which is the fundamental body. Thus, the Alaya Consciousness stores all existences as possibilities, or in other words, as "seeds". Therefore, it is also known as the "consciousness of all seeds".

The word "Alaya" means "to store", "to store", "to accumulate". The name "Himalaya", by the way, means "accumulation of snow". That is why the eighth consciousness is also called "storage consciousness".

The Alaya consciousness is also the place where we store the influence of all our experiences. Just as every landscape passing through the lens is etched on photographic paper, every mental, verbal or physical act, good or bad, is instantly planted in the Alaya consciousness like a seed.

In Sanskrit, the word "act" is called "karma". Thus, each of our acts, whether mental, verbal or physical, is inscribed in our eighth consciousness and, at the same time, this seed creates the future condition of retribution for these acts.

Thus, we see that according to Buddhism, what we are, as well as everything that can happen to us, is not the work of a God, of chance or of destiny, but rather the retribution of our own acts.

The teaching given by the Buddha throughout his life was not for us to understand these things, but rather that, through appropriate practices, we transform the content of our eighth consciousness, purify it and, one thing leading to another, purify our seventh consciousness by replacing our ridiculous little self, which thinks only of itself, with the immense life of the Buddha and, finally, purify our six roots, which allows us to realize the fusion of the Buddha, purify our seventh consciousness by replacing our ridiculous little self, which thinks only of itself, by the immense life of the Buddha and, finally, purify our six roots, which allows us to realize the perfect fusion of the subjective and the objective and thus to see the true aspect of things, which is called awakening, Buddhahood.

In the next chapters, we will see the chronological, methodological and doctrinal content of Shakyamuni Buddha's fifty years of preaching, then his development through the ages during which the great master of Tendai discovered the existence of a ninth consciousness called Amara.