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ālayo

ālaya

masc nom sg of ālaya (noun)

1. home; roost; perch; nest; lair; lit. sticking here
2. attachment (to); clinging (to); (comm) craving; lit. sticking here
3. pretence; lit. sticking here
4. reliance, thing relied on; lit. sticking here

Built from

• ā — prefix · toward, homeward
  Reverses motion toward the speaker's standpoint; here it suggests recurrent return, a place one is drawn back to.
• i — root · go, move
  Cognate with Latin īre and English iterate (to go again and again); the sense of repeated motion solidifies into a resting-place.
• a — ending · masculine nominative singular
  Standard masculine nominal ending in nominative; marks the citation form and subject case.

Analysis. ā- (toward) + √i (go): 'that toward which one goes', a place one repeatedly returns to; used metaphorically in Buddhist psychology for the habitual tendency to cling or attach.

Etymology. The prefix ā- (toward the speaker, homeward) combined with √i 'go' (cognate with English 'iterate', Latin 'īre'). The concrete image of returning home repeatedly becomes the abstract sense of an ingrained tendency or habitual resting-place of the mind—in Yogācāra psychology, ālayavijñāna is the 'storehouse consciousness' where karmic seeds lodge and germinate.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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