ālaya-consciousness ［阿頼耶識］ ( ālaya-vijnāna;  araya-shiki): Also, storehouse consciousness, never-perishing consciousness, or maintaining-consciousness (ādāna-consciousness). According to the Consciousness-Only school, the eighth and deepest of the eight consciousnesses; ālaya means abode, dwelling, or receptacle, and vijnāna means discernment. Located below the realms of conscious awareness, it is called the storehouse consciousness, because all karma created in the present and previous lifetimes is stored there. It is also called the never-perishing consciousness, because the karmic seeds preserved there continue even after death, and the maintaining-consciousness, because it maintains the life and body of a sentient being. The ālaya-consciousness is regarded as that which undergoes the cycle of birth and death, and determines the nature of individual existence. All the actions and experiences of life that occur through the first seven consciousnesses, such as sight, hearing, touch, and mind, are accumulated as karma in this ālaya-consciousness, which in turn exerts an influence on the workings of these seven. The Consciousness-Only school, which postulates the existence of the eight consciousnesses, holds that all phenomena arise from the ālaya-consciousness and that the ālaya-consciousness is the only reality.