Within Vasubandhu’s Yogācāra, karma and rebirth are understood through the dynamic of the ālaya-vijñāna, the “storehouse consciousness.” Every intentional act of body, speech, and mind deposits a subtle imprint or “seed” (bīja) in this underlying stream of consciousness. These seeds are not mere abstractions; they are the latent tendencies that, when conditions are suitable, ripen into concrete experiences, perceptions, and mental formations. In this way, karma is not simply an external law of reward and punishment, but the very process by which consciousness shapes its own world.

The ālaya-vijñāna provides the continuity that links one life to another without positing an eternal self. At death, the more superficial modes of consciousness cease, yet the storehouse consciousness, laden with karmic seeds, continues as a flowing stream. This continuity carries the accumulated tendencies into a new configuration of body and environment, giving rise to what is conventionally called rebirth. Thus, what transmigrates is not a fixed soul, but a process: the ongoing maturation of karmic seeds within consciousness itself.

From this perspective, the realms of rebirth and the diversity of beings’ experiences are understood as manifestations of consciousness conditioned by karma. The so‑called “external” world and the very sense of a body are, in crucial respects, results of the maturation (vipāka) of these seeds. Different beings inhabit different realms and perceive in different ways because their storehouse consciousnesses hold distinct karmic imprints. Rebirth, therefore, is not an arbitrary fate imposed from outside, but the unfolding of one’s own deeply ingrained patterns of mind.

The path, for Vasubandhu, centers on transforming this very basis of experience. Through insight and disciplined practice, unwholesome seeds are no longer planted, and existing defiled seeds are gradually weakened and exhausted. When the storehouse consciousness is fully purified of afflicted seeds and transformed, it no longer generates further karmic becoming. At that point, the cycle of karmically driven rebirth comes to an end, and the same stream of consciousness that once sustained saṃsāra becomes the locus of liberating wisdom.